This was announced by the head of the National Crisis Management Center (NKVC) Vilmantas Vitkauskas after the meeting of the Government’s National Security Commission.
“The list of countries will be compiled by the State Security Department with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he told reporters on Friday.
According to V. Vitkauskas, taking into account the threats, the list of countries could be wider than Russia and Belarus.
“(…) But let’s wait, let’s not try to define that list somehow, because it needs to be discussed, it needs to be evaluated,” he asserted.
According to V. Vitkauskas, the ban itself will be provided for in the amendments to the Law on State and Service Secrets, which are being prepared by the Ministry of National Defense.
“That law will provide for restrictions, bans on the travel of our citizens who have relevant permits (to work with classified information – BNS) to go abroad in order to protect themselves and state information,” said the head of the NKVC.
According to NKVC, the restrictions will affect about 56 thousand people. people.
According to the center, such decisions were made taking into account the fact that the Belarusian intelligence services have been active at the border for some time, Lithuanian citizens are interrogated at border points, forced to cooperate with the Belarusian intelligence services using blackmail and psychological pressure, and the risk that civil servants and officials will become targeted by hostile Belarusian and Russian special services, may become vulnerable.
The Commission meeting also approved a system of indicators, based on which threats would be assessed and decisions made on border control.
“The system consists of several components. Those components are mainly associated with risks of a military nature, as well as with information attacks, incidents at the border, with flows of illegal migration,” said V. Vitkauskas.
According to him, the system of indicators will not be public, so specific indicators and their values will be available only to certain services and institutions.
“We also want to present this system of indicators to neighboring countries, because the border of Belarus is also an issue for our neighbors, the Poles and Latvians,” said the head of the NKVC.
“I want to emphasize that this is Lithuania’s initiative and we are taking the first step here,” he added.
According to the head of the NKVC, certain response measures are planned alongside the indicators.
“This is a menu from which decision-makers could make certain decisions, if we saw that the indicator system shows us a certain danger, risk,” said V. Vitkauskas.
When asked what the indicators should be for all border points with Belarus to be closed, the head of the NKVC said that there are several critical ones.
“A critical indicator would be a threat of a military nature or some incident, say a border crossing, the use of certain weapons,” he said.
As critical indicators, he named incidents at the border, increased flows of illegal migration, damage to infrastructure by officials of neighboring states.
“These would be the critical incidents that would give us the basis to make such drastic decisions,” V. Vitkauskas said.
According to the center, the Joint Threat Prevention and Crisis Management Group and the National Security Commission made the decisions regarding restrictions on the flow of people, transport, and goods, as well as the complete closure of the state border with Belarus, proposing decisions to the Government.
In August, Lithuania closed two of the six border checkpoints with Belarus – Šumsk and Tverčius. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Agnė Bilotaitė, had announced that the ministry would propose to close two more – Lavoriškiu and Raigardos, but later Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė clarified that there are no plans to close more points in the near future.
The possible closure of the border with Belarus was discussed in Poland and the Baltic States when several thousand members of the Russian mercenary group “Wagner” moved to this country, but after the death of its commanders, some of the mercenaries of this private group left Belarus.
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