Interior ministers to discuss critical infrastructure security in Vilnius after Baltic Sea incident

VILNIUS - Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite is hosting her counterparts from the region's countries in Vilnius on Friday for talks on critical infrastructure security in the wake of a recent Baltic Sea incident where a gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable were damaged.

Officials from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, Finland and Norway are also expected to discuss hybrid threats, border protection, migration, and civil protection.

Information and cyber security is also on the agenda following a wave of hoax bomb threats targeting various establishments in the Baltic countries in recent weeks.

"All the countries in the region that share a border with Russia and Belarus face similar challenges, primarily illegal migration and other hybrid attacks," said Bilotaite.

"The aim of this meeting is to talk about common threats, joint actions and collective resilience in a broad format of as many as seven countries," she added.

Officials said earlier that during the meeting in Vilnius, the ministers could also agree on common criteria for closing the borders with Belarus and Russia.

Poland and the Baltic states started to consider closing their borders with Belarus after several thousand Wagner mercenaries relocated to the country. However, some of the fighters left Belarus following the death of the Russian mercenary group's leaders.