Although flows of irregular migrants have ebbed recently, the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service (VSAT) believes that the existing state of emergency in border areas should be extended.
Border guards have recorded no migrant attempts to cross into the country from Belarus for the past nine days.
“There would be a need [to extend the state of emergency] because the calm is temporary, as the current situation of our neighbours shows,” VSAT spokesman Giedrius Mišutis said referring to the situation at the Belarus-Poland border where there are still over 100 attempted crossings every day.
The state of emergency at Lithuania’s borders with Belarus and Russia is set to expire in mid-March.
“The level of threat to national security on Lithuania’s border with Belarus has not decreased as the Belarusian regime's hybrid attack by instrumentalising migrants is not yet over,” Interior Ministry said in a comment to BNS.
“The Belarusian regime is difficult to predict, so there is still a risk of various types of provocations in the future,” it added.
The Interior Ministry said the situation on the border with Belarus remains tense, adding that it does not rule out that a new migrant smuggling route through Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave might emerge.
Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė has said recently that the government is likely to ask the parliament to extend the state of emergency in border areas until the current policy of turning irregular migrants away is formalised in law.
The Interior Ministry plans to table a bill, which would allow border guards to turn away migrants not only under a state of emergency but also under the so-called extreme situation regime, to the parliament during the upcoming spring session.
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