Lithuania's SBGS calls for emergency situation over migrants

VILNIUS – Lithuania's State Border Guard Service has called for declaring a state of emergency over the growing influx of illegal migrants from Belarus.

"Our emergency operations center has lodged a proposal with the Interior Ministry's emergency operations center to declare a state-level emergency situation," Colonel Vidas Macaitis, deputy chief of the SBGS, told journalists on Friday.

That would allow getting additional forces involved, facilitating public procurement procedures, and municipalities would be obliged to provide premises for the accommodation of migrants.

Lithuanian border guards have detained 150 illegal migrants over the past 25 hours, which is triple of the previous daily records.

"The inflow is raising concern as it's growing with every day, every week. The state is facing problems, and, of course, the service as well due to the inflow of illegal migrants," Macaitis said.

In his words, there are now 835 accommodation places prepared, and around 500 of them are occupied. A total of 822 illegal migrants have been detained in Lithuania so far this year, having crossed in from Belarus, which is ten times more than through the whole year of 2020.