RIGA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th July, 2021) The total length of the border fence between Lithuania and Belarus will be 550 kilometers (341 miles), Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said on Friday.
Earlier today, the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service announced the first stage of construction of a fence on the border with Belarus, with a 30-kilometer length in the most problematic areas to halt the flow of illegal migrants.
"From today, the construction of a barrier with barbed wire has begun [on the border with Belarus], it is planned to install 550 kilometers. We see that we could do it quite quickly. The price of the fence will be about 41 million Euros," Bilotaite told reporters.
The length of the border between the two countries is 678.8 kilometers.
On July 2, Lithuania announced an emergency over an overflow of illegal migrants from Belarus. Some 1,500 people � many of them Iraqis, Iranians, and Syrians � have been caught trying to cross into the country this year, more than 19 times the number recorded during all of 2020.
Vilnius claims that Minsk has launched a "hybrid war" against it in response to the lack of support during mass unrest in Belarus. For his part, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that Minsk was unable to stem migration to the European Union due to Western sanctions.
