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Latvia’s Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has told Euronews that Russia and Belarus are intensifying their hybrid war against the Baltic state as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin looks to divert attention from losses on the battlefield in Ukraine.
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Latvia has recently become thefocal point of what EU governments describe as Russia and Belarus’ hybrid campaign against neighbouring states, with Belarus’ President Aliaksandr Lukashenka using the state-sponsored exploitation of migrants to exert pressure on the EU’s eastern border.
“We’re being tested,” Prime Minister Kulbergs told Euronews’ morning show,Europe Today. “At this moment, it is us. At any given moment it is our neighbours in Lithuania, Estonia, Finland or Poland.”
“This is a hybrid threat. This is a war threat. That’s what Russia does,” he added.
Since 2021, Belarus’ President Aliaksandr Lukashenka has been luring in migrants from the Middle East and Africa and busing them to the border with Poland and Baltic states.
Many countries have fortified their border defences, including through building fences, in response.
On Wednesday, Latvia’s armed forces said they had fired a warning shot and used tear gas against migrants attempting to cross from Belarus.
Asked why Russia and Belarus seemed to be singling out his country, Kulbergs responded: “Because he’s losing in Ukraine, simple. He needs to take attention somewhere else.”
He added that the asylum seekers attempting to cross were “men, 18 to 25, with a criminal past, all given visas from Belarus”.
“This is an organised threat towards us to find a weak link,” he explained, “and we all have to take all the measures to prevent that.”
Latvia recorded as many as 111 attempted illegal crossings from Belarus in a single day last week. That compared to just two attempts to cross into Lithuania, which shares a border four times as long with Belarus, on the same day.
The trend is reportedly prompting neighbouring Lithuania to mull introducing border controls with Latvia in order to prevent secondary migration, a prospect firmly rejected by both countries’ presidents. Secondary migration into Lithuania has spiked since Riga has been targeted with more migrant flows.
The increase also coincides with the start of the campaign ahead of Latvia’s October parliamentary elections, suggesting that the move is a coordinated attempt to destabilise the region’s democracy.
Watch the full interview with Prime Minister Kulbergs in the video player above and across all Euronews platforms.