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Border between Lithuania and Belarus (symbolic image)
Photo: Mindaugas Kulbis / dpa
According to the government in Vilnius, Belarusian border guards entered Lithuanian territory to drive 35 migrants across the border to neighboring Lithuania.
"We cannot tolerate such brazen provocation that twelve border guards crossed the border into Lithuania today," said Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite on Tuesday.
The guards equipped with shields and protective equipment crossed the border in the Salcininkai region.
The Lithuanian border authorities posted a video of the incident on online networks.
It said that Belarus had also published a video of it, but did not show that the migrants had been pushed across the border.
According to the EU, the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko is instrumentalizing the migrants in order to retaliate against Western sanctions against his country.
According to EU data, more than 4,000 migrants have been registered since the beginning of the year who entered "irregularly" across the border from Belarus to Lithuania.
Almost 2,800 of the people came from Iraq.
In all of 2020, only 81 illegally entered migrants were registered at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border.
ime / AFP