At a press conference at Estonia's Piusa border guard station on Friday, the ministers said measures need to be found to stop the Belarusian government from organizing illegal migration into the Baltic states.

The pressure is expected to fall over the winter, but is likely to pick up again next spring.

"One possibility is for all these countries to close their border crossing points with Belarus for a while, because Belarus is interested in maintaining this traffic, so perhaps that would get the message across, because in Poland's case it certainly worked," Taro said.

Latvian Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava said Latvia has amended its legislation so that border guards can respond more effectively to both border violations and damage to infrastructure.

"I think that if some of them reconsider the possibility of entering Latvian territory, we have given our border guards more opportunities to use weapons against those who illegally cross the border and attempt various actions against our technological infrastructure. So I think this also works as a preventive measure," he said.

Taro said Estonian border guards also need to be given additional powers.

"We should take into account that if people are operating in the border zone and it is not clear that they are our own people, then they are probably enemies, and in that case a border guard must have complete confidence that they can use all means to stop that hostile activity there, up to and including weapons, up to and including lethal force. We are currently analyzing how our legal framework deals with this, how much room for interpretation we have and whether anything needs to be changed," the Estonian minister said.

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