Lappo: Poland and Baltic States don’t stop trying to push refugees to Belarus

Poland and the Baltic States do not stop their attempts to push refugees to Belarus – as noted by Anatoly Lappo, the Chairman of the State Border Committee of Belarus, on meeting the Gefest-Technika enterprise employees in Brest

“Since January 2022, there have been 1,200 attempts to force refugees into our country from the Polish direction, and about 1,000 attempts – from the Baltic direction. When we were friends, we took on some of the tasks of the border guards of neighbouring countries. We detained border violators, international organisations allocated money for this. Now we have focused all our efforts on protecting the border to enter Belarus. We guard our home. If they invited refugees to Europe, destroying their houses, let them feed these refugees now,” Anatoly Lappo summed up.

The Head of the State Border Committee focused on the fact that Belarus is always ready to liaise and maintain good neighbourly relations with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – as is vividly seen from the visa-free entry rules for citizens of neighbouring EU states. Ukrainians were allowed to pick up wild plants in the Belarusian border area this year – blueberries and cranberries – but they were not allowed to do this by armed people.”

Anatoly Lappo added that none of the checkpoints on Belarus’ external border was closed at the initiative of our country. Moreover, the border guards of neighbouring countries do not comply with agreements on the passage of motor vehicles. So, in the past 24 hours, the Poles let in 480 cars at the Brest automobile checkpoint (while an agreement envisages 1,700 vehicles), the queue today is 250 cars. 137 vehicles were registered (according to an agreement this figure should be 500) at the Kamenny Log checkpoint on the border with Lithuania, while the queue is 610 cars.

“We are doing our best to keep the border closed. Many different attempts are being made, including to smuggle weapons. We have opportunities and means for protection which is proven by the discovery of 80kg of hashish at the Brest checkpoint on October 4th,” Anatoly Lappo added.