The European Union hopes that the abolition of all passenger flights from Iraq to Belarus will help stabilize the situation with the influx of migrants in Lithuania. This was stated by the representative of the European Commission (EC), it quotes Reuters.
“We are pleased with the constructive approach of Iraqi partners,” he noted, praising Baghdad’s reaction to what was happening in countries adjacent to Belarus.
On August 10, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Latvia Maria Golubev called on the government of the country to introduce emergency regime in the Belarusian-Latvian border in connection with the influx of illegal migrants. The Lithuanian state border guard report reported the capture of a record number of illegal migrants – in early August, 289 such illegals were detained. Most of them introduced themselves as citizens of Iraq.
Baghdad decided to suspend all passenger flights to Belarus from August 7.
Since the beginning of this year, over four thousand illegal migrants are detained at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, which is 50 times more than in the entire past year. At the end of May 2021, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, noted that the Republic served as a barrier on the way of transferring illegal migrants to the neighboring country, however, according to the political pressure of the West, Minsk can think about whether to continue to do this.