Latvia's Prime Minister Accused Russia of Orchestrating Migration Pressure
Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs stated that “the top leadership of the Russian mafia” is behind the increase in the number of attempts to illegally cross the Latvian border from Belarus. He made these remarks in an interview with Euronews, according to “European Truth.”
According to Kulbergs, the Russian Federation—an aggressor state—and Belarus are intensifying their hybrid war against Latvia. He linked this to Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s desire to divert attention from battlefield losses in Ukraine.
“We are being tested. Right now, it’s us. At any moment, it could be our neighbors in Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, or Poland. This is a hybrid threat. This is a military threat. This is what Russia is doing. It’s losing in Ukraine—it’s that simple. It needs to shift the focus elsewhere,” said the Latvian prime minister.
Kulbergs also claims that the people attempting to cross the border are men between the ages of 18 and 25 with criminal records, to whom Belarus has issued visas. He called this an organized threat aimed at finding a weak spot in Latvia.
Last week, Latvia recorded 111 attempts to illegally cross the border from Belarus in a single day. On the same day, Lithuania—which has a border with Belarus four times as long—recorded two such attempts.
Against the backdrop of the growing flow of illegal migration to Latvia, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius announced his readiness to step up technological cooperation. Lithuanian Interior Minister Martynas Katelinas said that the authorities may consider temporarily reinstating border controls if the current scale of secondary illegal migration from Latvia persists.
