Lithuania reports no illegal migrant crossings from Belarus for 16 consecutive weeks

Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service (VSAT) has recorded no illegal migrant crossings from Belarus for 16 weeks in a row, the agency reported on Saturday.

Border guards detected no unauthorised entries along the Lithuanian-Belarusian border on May 23, maintaining a streak that began in mid-January. During the same period, Latvian authorities intercepted 59 irregular migrants, while Poland’s Border Guard reported no detections as of Friday.

Last year, Lithuanian officers blocked over 1,600 attempts by migrants to enter from Belarus through unofficial border points. This year’s total stands at 724 prevented crossings. Since the start of the Belarus-orchestrated migration crisis in 2021, Lithuania has denied entry to approximately 25,300 irregular migrants.

The influx of migrants toward eastern EU states began in 2021, with Western officials accusing Minsk of deliberately engineering the crisis.