Home › Politics › What Belarus's border moves meant for Kyiv and Vilnius
What Belarus's border moves meant for Kyiv and Vilnius
Summary
Two announcements on 2 July 2021 put Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko at the centre of disputes with both Ukraine and Lithuania.
What was Minsk's neighbourhood facing on 5 July 2021? Three days earlier, on 2 July 2021, two separate border disputes had opened with Belarus, and both were still unresolved.
On 2 July, Belarus closed its border with Ukraine. President Alexander Lukashenko claimed that arms were being smuggled into the country in an attempt by outside powers to overthrow his regime. Ukraine denied the claim and said that closing the border would make its people suffer.
The same day, Lithuania declared a state of emergency amid a rise in undocumented migrants crossing from Belarus, most of them Syrians. The Lithuanian government accused Lukashenko of deliberately trying to destabilise the country by encouraging and allowing the crossings.
Two neighbours, one accused
The two cases differed. Belarus was the party imposing a closure on Ukraine, while Lithuania was reacting to arrivals across its frontier. Yet in each, Lukashenko was the figure at the centre of the accusations, and in each the neighbouring government rejected or contested his role. Ukraine denied the smuggling allegation; Lithuania blamed Minsk for the migrant flow.
For Kyiv, the immediate concern was the effect of a closed border on ordinary people. For Vilnius, it was the emergency response to rising crossings.
