How is Lithuania managing to fortify itself from Belarus: net, poles and concertina
The representatives of EPSO-G company, which met on Thursday at the Physical Barrier Wall near the Belarus Project Supervision Commission, informed that they had to build about 85 kilometers of fences and 5 kilometers of concertina before the end of the work.
It is expected that at the beginning of September, a physical barrier of approximately one hundred and fifty kilometers will be standing on the border, separating Lithuania from Belarus.
In the three decades since the restoration of independence, the border with Belarus, which was just a pillar, was covered by a wire fence with a cutting edge.
The long-delayed solution required neither much nor little: four migrants, whom the dictator of the neighboring country, Alexander Lukashenko, turned into instruments of his own hybrid aggression.
Vidmantas Balkūnas / 15min photo/Somali citizens warming themselves by a fire right next to the Lithuanian state border on the territory of Belarus
The first coils of concertina wire were brought to the border from their warehouses by the Lithuanian army, later hundreds of kilometers were donated by Ukraine, Slovenia, Estonia, Turkey, Hungary and others.
“The biggest challenge was concertina, and the first quantities of concertina came from the army reserve. Unfortunately, it was only enough for the first kilometers, then all of us at the Ministry of Internal Affairs became concertina managers. I am the Minister of the Interior of the European Union. The people of the ministry used all international contacts and moved the support matters forward”, said A. Bilotaitė last summer.
The most sensitive sections of the wall were then covered by a concertina pyramid of six rolls, and the construction of a higher fence was also planned.
The first months of the construction of the concertina were also marked by tragedy – on the last day of summer in the Varėna district, an officer of the Fire Protection and Rescue Department, Egidijus Karla, was killed. The officer, who gave more than half of his life to the service, was fatally injured at the border while preparing to erect and install a concertina.
At the beginning of August, the State Border Guard proposed to build a fence about four meters high, which would be made of welded wire mesh service, at the top it would end with Y bars, on which cutting wire, the so-called concertina, would be mounted.
According to VSAT’s calculation, the installation of such a fence with a concertina would cost 152.460 million. euros. A month later, it was decided that the construction of the fence would be carried out by the state energy company group “Epso-G”.
A special commission headed by Ingrida Šimonytė was created to oversee the work, the commission also includes the ministers of internal affairs, energy, national defense, environment and finance, the commander of the VSAT, the head of the State Territorial Planning and Construction Inspectorate and a representative of EPSO-G.
Although at first it was assumed that all the construction works of more than half a thousand kilometers long could last two years, but later the builders and political powers found ways and accelerated the process – they decided to finish the fence by September 2022, they agreed to follow this plan for the whole year and the data remained the same.
The fence between Lithuania and Belarus is built daily by about 800 workers, using more than 100 pieces of equipment. The physical barrier increases by 3-4 kilometers every day.
This was recently confirmed by the Minister of Energy, Dainius Kreivys, who assured that neither the project budget nor the time required for its implementation has increased.
Every day, about 800 workers are building the fence between Lithuania and Belarus, using more than 100 pieces of equipment – bulldozers, excavators, hoists, tractors, lifting mechanisms, etc. The physical barrier increases by 3-4 kilometers every day.
The state border passing through forests, swamps, hills and ditches requires many non-standard solutions – gates, wickets, stairs, water culverts. In total, the Lithuanian-Belarusian border is approximately 679 kilometers long, but more than 100 kilometers run along lakes and rivers, where the fence line is not planned.
However, the fence is only one attribute of successful border protection, officials emphasized. If no one watches that fence, it can only serve as a symbolic prevention, they said.
Before the beginning of the crisis of migrants from Belarus, border guards used modern systems to monitor a little more than a third of the entire length of the border with Belarus. Money was also earmarked for the installation of surveillance systems on the rest of the wall, but work progressed slowly and was planned to be done in just five years. After the construction of the fence began, the installation of surveillance systems was accelerated in parallel, and five years were reduced to one.
According to the head of VSAT, Rustam Lyubayev, by the end of this year, modern monitoring systems have already been installed on the border with Belarus.
Although during the year, the border guards had to pay a lot of attention to a completely new painful concern – illegal crossing migrants, but the fence and monitoring systems also served a much more traditional evil – smuggling.
A.Lukashenko’s regime used cigarette smuggling for many years to replenish its treasury. And the state-owned tobacco factory “Neman” only increased its revolutions. Lithuania was one of the main routes of Belarusian cigarettes to Europe, so the fence, surveillance systems and more modern checks at the border posts prevent another flow of funds.
“It must be said that both the physical barrier and the border surveillance system at the border with Belarus will be fully implemented by the end of this year. It is already having an effect. As a result, more contraband is intercepted,” said R. Liubaev recently.
As always, small-time smugglers are extremely flexible and adapt to all physical barriers, so they increasingly float cigarettes on rivers, fly drones and resort to other tricks. However, border guards do not sleep either.
This year, it was announced that the European Commission should allocate about 70 million euros for the protection of the border of the Lithuanian state. It is planned that 40 million EUR 100,000 will be allocated to the surveillance system, and the rest to drones, their anti-aircraft systems and other measures.
In the summer of 2022, Lithuanian officials admit that the hybrid attack organized in Minsk has already ended – the threat of hundreds of migrants pouring in again from Belarus has largely disappeared. However, even if similar provocations were to happen again, Lithuania would already be much more prepared than a year or a half ago.
Politicians and officials have passed the migrant crisis exam, but the question arises about the human rights exam, where it seems that they will have to write much lower grades. This is recognized by more and more international organizations and human rights defenders, but it will not be enough to allocate several hundred or several tens of millions of euros to learn these lessons.