EU border guards sent to Lithuania amid Belarus migrant crisis

A record number of migrants and refugees are entering EU member Lithuania from Belarus as tensions between Brussels and Minsk simmer.

A first team of six guards from the European Union’s border agency Frontex began working in Lithuania on Friday, as the Baltic state reported another sharp rise in migrants and refugees arriving from Belarus amid simmering tensions between the bloc and Minsk. The Lithuanian border guard service said over the last 24 hours it detained 150 migrants and refugees – almost twice as many as for the whole of 2020. That brings the total number of detected illegal crossings along their shared 680km (420-mile) border to more than 800 so far this year. In 2020, there were 81 detected crossings.