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Lithuanian border guards patrol the border with Belarus
Photo: Mindaugas Kulbis / AP
The EU accuses Belarus of deliberately allowing refugees to cross its border towards the European Union.
Now the authoritarian ruled Belarus wants to close parts of its border and thus prevent people who have fled to Lithuania from returning to its territory.
"As of today, nobody is allowed to cross the border from either side, neither from the south nor from the west," said the ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, according to the state agency Belta.
In the past, Lukashenko has openly threatened to allow people from countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria to cross the border in response to the EU sanctions imposed on his country.
In the past few weeks, for example, the EU border protection agency Frontex has sent additional personnel to Lithuania to prevent illegal border crossings.
Lithuania is an advocate of the Belarusian opposition
In the Baltic EU country, several hundred refugees without valid papers have crossed the border from neighboring Belarus in the past few weeks.
According to official information, around 3,500 people have been apprehended at the almost 680 kilometer long border with Belarus this year.
Most of them applied for asylum.
Lithuania is one of the greatest advocates of the democracy movement in the neighboring country and has long been a refuge for the Belarusian opposition.
Lukashenko now obviously wants to prevent the EU from sending the refugees who have been apprehended back to Belarus.
He said that it would be a "threat" to his country if refugees were collected at the crossing points and then "deported to Belarus under the threat of armed violence."
The EU had never expressed any intention to do so.
EU complains: "The practice must end"
But she appointed the Belarus envoy.
"This practice must end and Belarus must comply with international obligations in the fight against irregular immigration and people smuggling," declared the EU Commission.
According to the Reuters news agency, the EU is also in talks with the Iraqi government.
It is about the possibility of suspending flights from Baghdad to Minsk.
What will change for the refugees at the border as a result of Lukashenko's announcement is still unclear: Asylum seekers could then possibly be stuck in a no-man's-land area at the border.
For example, it was at the Turkish-Greek border crossing in spring 2020 when Turkey apparently brought refugees to the border in order to put the EU under pressure.
At that time, some of the people were also prevented from starting the way back - even though they had been brought there under false promises.
lau / dpa / Reuters