Belarus promised to respond to the closure of the checkpoint with Latvia

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry called Latvia’s closure of the Urbana-Silene checkpoint “an openly unfriendly politicized step” and promised that it would respond to the unmotivated blockade of cargo and passenger flows, including with specific economic measures, reported press service of the department.

“The clumsy attempts of official Riga to justify it with the interests of strengthening border security do not stand up to criticism. It is obvious that illegal migrants do not use official crossing points. And the several dozen Latvian border service officers released at the same time are hardly capable of radically strengthening border security,” the Foreign Ministry responded.

The ministry assumes that the decision was agreed upon during a meeting of the interior ministers of the Baltic countries and Poland at the end of August 2023 in Warsaw. At the same time, the Belarusian side declares that it remains open to normal interaction through the competent departments, and calls on Latvia to abandon “the destructive practice of unfounded accusations and return to an equal, mutually respectful dialogue with the aim of jointly solving the global migration problem.”

19 September Latvian side reported on the closure of one of the two checkpoints on the border with Belarus due to a large number of “cases of illegal crossing of the Latvian-Belarusian border.”