Home › Politics › Moldova's vaccines and Lithuania's border fence
Moldova's vaccines and Lithuania's border fence
Summary
Two reports from the days before 12 July 2021 showed how Ukraine's western and northern neighbours were handling pressures on their borders and their health systems.
What were Ukraine's neighbours dealing with by 12 July 2021? Two reports from the preceding days gave part of the answer: a vaccine donation to Moldova and a border fence in Lithuania.
On 10 July 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that the United States had donated 500,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to Moldova. Moldovan President Maia Sandu praised the United States for the deployment.
On 9 July 2021, Lithuania began building a $48 million fence along its border with Belarus. A week earlier, Lithuania had declared a state of emergency over a rise in undocumented migrants crossing from Belarus, most of them reportedly Syrians. Vilnius accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately trying to destabilise the country by encouraging and allowing the crossings.
The two reports describe different problems. In Moldova it was the pandemic, with the US donation as the response. In Lithuania it was irregular migration, which the government blamed on Minsk and met with a state of emergency and a fence.
