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“We are not clear yet; it would be difficult to expect to receive an official message from our Belarusian colleagues overnight, but the situation at the state border has not changed much overnight: the state border is being crossed,” said the State Border Guard Service (SBGS). vadas.
“Naturally, at night, the movement’s activity slowed down a bit, but vehicles and people cross the state border. So far, there are no special changes, “he added.
According to R. Liubajev, Lithuanian officials will continue to try to contact Belarusian colleagues today for more information after the country’s President Aliaksandr Lukashenko announced on Thursday that Belarus will close the border with the West, mainly with Lithuania and Poland.
According to the head of SBGS, neither the border guards of neighboring Poland nor the heads of the Belarusian border guards at the regional level had information about the new regime on Thursday night.
Romas Austinskas, president of Linava, the Lithuanian National Road Transport Association, told BNS on Thursday that Belarusian border officials have been carefully inspecting cars crossing the Lithuanian border with X-ray equipment for a couple of days.
On Friday morning, according to Liubayev, there is a small queue at the border: about 180 trucks are waiting to leave and about 30 trucks on the Belarusian side.
“There is nothing special here, we have those queues periodically,” he said.
Lukashenko said on Thursday that Belarus was closing the border with the West and strengthening the protection of the state border with Ukraine, and said it would send “half the army” to strengthen the protection of the western borders.
Mr. Lukashenko added that he will strengthen the protection of the state of the Union with the help of the Russian authorities.
For more than a month there have been unprecedented protests in Belarus over the August 9 presidential elections, which Lukashenko has ruled the country since 1994. The opposition and Western countries consider these elections to be rigged.
The European Union has previously approved plans to impose sanctions on those responsible for violence against protesters in Belarus. The US State Department has also announced that it is preparing to impose sanctions on Minsk and is consulting with the EU on this.
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