On 2 September 2021, the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zanda Kalniņa Lukaševica, took part in a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, which featured exchange of views on the situation at the EU’s external border with Belarus. The Parliamentary Secretary underlined that the European Union is witnessing an unprecedented and blatant hybrid attack on the EU by the Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.
Representatives from Latvia, Lithuania and Poland drew the MEPs’ attention to the fact that Belarus is weaponising migration and using the citizens of third countries as their political tool. It was also underlined that the Belarusian regime is staging a vast disinformation campaign to mislead society, create confusion and discredit the values of a democratic community with a far-reaching aim of destabilizing the security situation in the region.
“The regime has deliberately chosen to deploy hybrid warfare in order to counter our calls for democratic change in Belarus, and organising free and fair presidential elections. The aggressive behaviour of Belarusian authorities poses serious challenges to the security of Latvia and that of the EU. The aim of the Lukashenko regime is to destabilize the situation in the region in order to change the EU’s policy. Lukashenko wants us to lift our sanctions and to stop us from supporting the Belarusian civil society. An integral part of this attack is disinformation,” Zanda Kalniņa-Lukaševica in her remarks to the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The Parliamentary Secretary noted that people from third countries such as Iraq are lured into Belarus by false promises. Those people are issued with official tourist visas, and the trips are organised by official Belarusian tourism companies, with the visitors being housed in Belarusian state hotels and later directed towards the EU border. Belarusian authorities are often taking away their travel documents and preventing those people from returning to their countries of origin as Latvia’s contacts, for example, with Iraq, have shown. “This operation by the Lukashenko regime is very cynical, as it uses the most vulnerable people, women and children,” Zanda Kalniņa-Lukaševica asserted.
To curb the attack, the EU together with likeminded countries must keep building up pressure on Lukashenko’s regime with additional sanctions, including against Belavia, the country’s official airlines, the Parliamentary Secretary pointed out. The EU Member States and institutions shall continue to reach out to third countries and urge them to prevent their citizens from being unwillingly dragged into this operation deployed by Belarus. The Parliamentary Secretary underlined that the EU must continue its support for the civil society and independent media in Belarus.
As one of the lines of action, the Latvian Foreign Ministry’s Parliamentary Secretary mentioned the need for the EU to develop a toolbox which would make it possible to respond to all the diversity of hybrid threats and to build the EU’s resilience against them.
During the exchange of views at the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, strong support was voiced for a united and solidarity-based EU’s response under the conditions of hybrid threat created by the Lukashenko regime.
The meeting was presided over by the Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, David McAllister, and reporters also were the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Mantas Adomenas; the Permanent Representative of Poland to the EU, Andrzej Sados; and the Deputy Managing Director Russia, Eastern Partnership, Central Asia and OSCE at the European External Action service, Luc Devigne.