The incursion into Latvia and Minsk’s border policy: a sharp weapon to help Putin with Kyiv

Belarus is a thorn in the side of Europe. Alexander Lukashenko’s regime has aligned the country with Russia’s interests, and now Minsk, like a four-pronged weapon, is set on wounding those neighbouring it: Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Just like a crow’s foot, it strikes one country one moment and another the next – not only because Vladimir Putin, who guarantees the survival of the Belarusian regime, wants it to, but also because Lukashenka himself has his own agenda and is participating in his own way in the Kremlin’s war: without weapons, without an army, but by striking Kyiv and its allies, as happened the other night in Riga. Latvia has reported that during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, masked armed men from Belarus broke into Latvian territory, damaging an electrical panel and stealing several CCTV cameras. 

They fled before the border guards arrived, and this was not the first such provocation. Previously, a group of men had forced their way through, clearing the path for migrants – a route that Belarus has been using since 2021, when it began organising the trafficking of people, mainly from Syria, encouraging them to reach Minsk and then abandoning them along the borders. The migrants, to whom the Belarusian regime had sold the promise of easy entry into the European Union via the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, were herded along the fences and left to freeze in those lands. Belarus has never stopped; it has continued to deport migrants, to push them towards the EU’s borders, and has built underground tunnels right on the border with Latvia, with the aim of destabilising Europeans.

Riga has just emerged from a politically significant weekend, during which the United List party was re-elected as the most popular, and outgoing Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs will proceed to form a coalition that maintains support for Ukraine and the commitment to counter threats from Moscow. Latvia remains the most vulnerable country, and harassing, threatening and provoking it is a constant practice on the part of Minsk, which is exerting the pressure that Moscow also needs to break European solidarity with Ukraine and has long believed that Riga could be a point of weakness. Lukashenko has allowed Putin to use his territory to strike Kyiv; even today, Russian weapons, vehicles and soldiers are stationed in Belarus, and Ukraine’s northern border is constantly monitored for fear of a new invasion facilitated by Minsk’s free passage.