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Lithuania's emergency and Poland's Afghan exit
Summary
Two developments on NATO's eastern flank framed the period around 5 July 2021, one on the Belarus border and one far away in Afghanistan.
What did the days leading up to 5 July 2021 mean for the countries bordering Belarus? Two reports set the picture.
On 2 July 2021, Lithuania declared a state of emergency as the number of undocumented migrants crossing from Belarus rose. The Lithuanian government accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately trying to destabilise the country by encouraging and allowing migrants, mostly Syrians, to cross the border.
The accusation put the border itself at the centre of the dispute between Vilnius and Minsk. A state of emergency is an exceptional step, and Lithuania took it while attributing the cause to a deliberate policy on the Belarusian side.
Two days earlier, on 30 June 2021, the last Polish troops left Afghanistan, ending Poland's involvement in the war there. Around 33,000 Polish troops had served in the country, and 44 were killed in action.
The two events were separate, but both involved Poland and Lithuania, neighbours of Belarus, at the same moment: one closing a long overseas deployment, the other facing pressure on a frontier at home.
