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  • 2021-07-22 (xsd:date)
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  • he said. In a certain sense (en)
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  • This month, Lithuania has experienced a sudden influx of non-European refugees and migrants entering via its 670-kilometer border with Belarus.On July 19, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that more than 2,000 migrants had crossed into the small Baltic country, 1,400 of them just in the past month. The Associated Press reported 1,700 for the same period, noting that the figure for all of 2020 had been 80. Lithuanian authorities accused Belarus’ government of encouraging the migrant flow, possibly in retaliation for Lithuanian and European Union sanctions on the regime of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.The sanctions were levied against the Lukashenko regime in June after Belarus forced a RyanAir flight to land in Minsk in order to arrest opposition Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich, a passenger who was returning to Vilnius from Athens.On July 20, the Belarusian state news agency Belta published an article that quoted Andrei Savinykh, chairman of the Belarus House of Representatives’ Standing Commission on International Affairs, as denying that Belarus was behind the influx of migrants.Accusing Belarus of organizing migrant smuggling into Lithuania is a vivid example of political slander and unfounded allegations (en)
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