Estonia sends second police rotation to Latvia-Belarus border
A second Estonian policing unit departed for Latvia on Monday to assist the Latvian border guard in stopping the flow of migrants crossing into the European Union from Belarus.
Migrants, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, have been crossing the border into the EU via Poland, Latvia and Lithuania since the spring of 2021 with the assistance of the Belarusian authorities.
The number of illegal crossings has risen in recent months and is now around 60 a day, public broadcaster LSM reports.
Estonia's Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) has sent several units to Latvia in recent years after receiving requests for help from its Latvian counterpart. The first rotation of the year, ESTPOL10, was deployed two weeks ago.
As the situation has not changed, a second unit has been sent to the Robežnieki border region in the southeast, the PPA said in a statement on Monday.
As before, Latvia requested a team of people with crowd control training, the agency added.
Veiko Kommusaar, the PPA's deputy director general for border management, said the situation on the border is a shared problem.
"The first rotation of ESTPOL10 received nothing but praise from the Latvian Border Guard – they managed to catch both people who crossed the border illegally and one person on the spot who was involved in transporting illegal border crossers. I am convinced that in a few weeks I will hear similar praise for the second rotation," he said in a statement.
Kirill Shchepanov, head of the second rotation, said his experience as part of a previous deployment in 2023 will allow work to get underway quickly.
Poland, Latvia and Lithuania have been criticized by human rights groups for pushing migrants back rather than letting them claim asylum.
Ministers say the flow of people is a "hybrid attack" orchestrated with the backing of the Belarusian authorities. Several media investigations have supported this claim, as well as video footage of the Belarusian border guards cutting wire fences to allow migrants to cross into the EU.
Last year, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina told ERR News that people smugglers are becoming "smarter" and using more extreme tactics to try and move people to other EU countries, such as Germany, after crossing the border.
In 2024, while the EU overall saw a drop in irregular migrants, the "Eastern Borders route" – Belarus' border with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania – saw a 192 percent increase.
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Editor: Helen Wright
