Lithuania’s border with Belarus should be reopened once the issue of smuggling balloons is brought under control, Seimas Speaker Juozas Olekas said Wednesday.
“The measures we have now taken will have an effect. There have been no balloons in recent days,” Olekas told the radio Žinių Radijas. “Despite the response of the Belarusian regime, we still want life to go on and the border to be reopened at some point.”
He said that while closing the border is effective in deterring those who launch smuggling balloons, it also disrupts daily life and trade.
“Closing the border is effective in deterring those who launch the balloons, but it hinders our normal lives,” Olekas said. “We would like the border to be open so that our people can travel and our haulers can go to those points, because all Central Asian cargo goes through here.”
Last week, the Lithuanian government decided to close the border with Belarus until November 30, allowing crossings only for diplomats, returning citizens of Lithuania and other EU or NATO countries, and foreigners holding residence permits or humanitarian visas.
Over the past two weeks, operations at Vilnius Airport have been suspended five times and once at Kaunas Airport due to sightings of smuggling balloons, disrupting more than 160 flights and affecting over 22,000 passengers.
Oleg Tarasov, vice president of Linava, the national road carriers’ association, told BNS on Tuesday that the only way to resolve the problem of around 5,000 Lithuanian trucks and semi-trailers stranded in Belarus is to reopen the closed border.
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