The crisis on the Belarusian-Lithuanian border is escalating as Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s autocratic regime continues to weaponize migrants from the Middle East against Europe. And with joint Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2021 military exercises just three weeks away, Western defense officials are increasingly on high alert.
On August 9, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg vowed that the Western alliance would closely monitor what he called Belarusian “hybrid activities” against Lithuania. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called Lukashenka’s actions “an attack on all of us in the European Union.” And following an August 17 meeting, EU interior ministers preliminarily agreed to provide Lithuania with additional funding and border officers, RFE/RL reported.
But it was Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics who made explicit the combustible combination that Lukashenka’s manufactured migrant crisis and the looming Zapad-2021 exercises present. “You have a border crisis, you have a major military exercise going on at the borders of Nato countries, you also have increased presence on our side, the Lithuanian side, Estonian side, and Polish side, of border guards and military formations. Of course, this is increasing the possibility of incidents,” Rinkevics said in a recent Financial Times interview.
Riho Terras, a member of the European Parliament who previously served as Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces, suggested that Lithuania invoke Article 4 of the NATO Charter, which calls for consultations when an alliance member is under threat. “Involving NATO is the only right course of action here,” he said.