Oct. 7 — Armed escorts of undocumented migrants from Belarus crossed the Latvian border and damaged border infrastructure, Jānis Dombrava, the Minister of the Interior of Latvia, said on his X account.

According to Dombrava, at first, migrants’ escorts, who were armed and wearing masks, remained on Belarusian territory, made threats against the border guards, and forced the group of migrants to continue moving toward Latvia. Border guards detained 20 people. 

A few hours later, masked people entered Latvia, damaged a distribution cabinet, and stole the cameras. Before a border patrol arrived, the individuals returned to Belarus.

The Minister added that “Belarus should understand that such incidents could lead to more serious consequences.”

Since the beginning of 2026, Latvia’s border guards have stopped 11,384 attempts to cross the border illegally from Belarus. Also, irregular migrants reportedly used an underground tunnel that Latvian services detected 10 meters from the fence.

The Latvian National Armed Forces said that “aggressive cases of illegal migration” at the Latvian-Belarusian border are being used to put pressure on Latvia and the external borders of the European Union and NATO.

Latvia keeps up its increased border security measures because of the large number of border violators detected at the Latvian-Belarusian border.

The flow of irregular migrants from Belarus to Latvia, Poland, and Lithuania started in 2021, when Alexandr Lukashenko threatened to let undocumented people from the Middle East countries into EU after the bloc sanctioned Lukashenko in the aftermath of him seizing the power in Belarus, having allegedly rigged the elections. 

After that, human rights organizations called on the EU to make sure irregular migrants at their border “irrespective of the manner of their arrival, has the right to make an asylum application” while “people in the middle of the crisis are being used as parties in the conflict between the EU and Belarus which has a security dimension.”   

Since 2022, with Russia using Belarus’ territory to conduct military aggression against Ukraine, border tensions have increased. 

Latvia provided evidence of the involvement of Belarusian security forces in organizing illegal migration across the border. Latvian services also found documents and communication devices of one of detained migrants belonging to the Belarusian military.

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