Нам трэба сесці за стол перамоваў - such a message is conveyed through the media by the Minister of Defense Artis Pabriks on behalf of the Government of Latvia to the President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. We need to sit at the negotiating table, because the migrant crisis cannot be escalated indefinitely - there are too many weapons on the border and people are too high-strung. In addition, large military exercises are approaching on both sides of the border - Namejs 2021 on our side, and Запад 2021 on theirs.
These will be sizable exercises on both sides. 9,372 of our own soldiers and 615 allies have registered for Namejs. So a total of 10,000. And on the other side of the border, in Russia and Belarus, it is 13,000. These, of course, are the official figures. Unofficially, it is estimated that Запад 2021 will gather up to 200,000 soldiers in the largest quadrennial exercise. In army vocabulary, the word exercise has a completely different meaning. It is not a gym, no one is trying to improve their fitness here. Here they simulate war. There are big military maneuvers - armor and weapons are in the air, on the ground, in the water. And this year - also on the border, which is especially dangerous. The situation is exacerbated by the artificially created migrant crisis. This joint operation between Russia and Belarus even has a name - sluice. From their side, a large number of criminals are flowing in, but the sluice on our side of the border is congested. And at any moment the shutters can burst open. Putin and Lukashenko test the resilience of the European Union and NATO. Our side is responding accordingly. The Namejs scenario is built in two phases - in the first, the country faces a hybrid threat. In the second phase, a conventional war takes place. The state must be protected from a real military attack. Currently, Phase 1 is not limited to the learning scenario. A real hybrid attack is taking place on the eastern border of Latvia, and we can only hope that Phase 1 in real life will not turn into Phase 2, as happened in Ukraine. There, Russia took away part of the territory of Ukraine. Many people died, but Ukraine's allies just watched because Ukraine is not a member of NATO or the EU. All kinds of business - yes. Military assistance - no. Well, maybe some pencils for soldiers' children. That's it.
Currently, the situation on the Latvian-Belarusian border is heated. Also on the Lithuanian and Polish border. Technically, Operation Sluice is a problem for border guards. But in practice, there are a large number of soldiers, special services and weapons on the border. Heavy weapons that should not be there, even ignoring that along with migrants, the threat of radical Islamism and terrorism is also being sent to Europe. Iraqi criminals are not armed. At least for now. However, Belarusian border guards and soldiers are armed with sniper rifles and machine guns. A machine gun is a device that fires a large number of bullets in a short amount of time. It is designed to kill large numbers of people at once. And armed with such a device, the Belarusians push the migrants back and forth right in front of the Latvian border guards, trying to get them to go over. If even one shot is made, the consequences can be dramatic. Even if it is not targeted and intentional. For example, the safety switch of a weapon may get caught in the harness, turn off, and then the soldier or border guard stumbles. A shot sounds. Of course, the opposite side will shoot back. Last weekend, the Ministry of Defense held a press conference about the tense situation on the border and military maneuvers on both sides. Minister Artis Pabriks and Colonel Māris Simsons, Head of the Operational Planning Department of the Joint Headquarters of the National Armed Forces, explained the exercise in the context of the real situation. This Namejs is different, because the threat is not just conceived by military strategists, but quite real. Neatkarīgā asked what would happen if that one shot sounded. There are only a few meters between the forces on both sides. In the middle are groups of recruited criminals from Belarus. Among them - also children, women and the disabled as a cover.
Colonel Simsons admits that the human factor cannot be ruled out. Therefore, our soldiers have been given the appropriate instructions of using force: "Our soldiers know what to do."
Technically, the operation against Sluice is led by the State Border Guard. But there are armies and special services on both sides. Both in forms and without recognizable insignia. As long as there is no war, the army will not take command.
And the Latvian Border Guard are managing, at least for the time being. Even though the Ministry of the Interior is headed by a politician without any previous experience in such structures. Minister Marija Golubeva also advocates a more liberal migration policy - for more migrants, and more lenient treatment of illegal residents. And, in her opinion, border violators should not be called criminals either, even though illegal border crossing is a criminal act. However, there is no disagreement in the government over the current migrant crisis, and the two ministers, Pabriks and Golubeva, make occasional statements of excellent cooperation. This means that if there is a need to respond to the first shot, or the human factor - a mistake was to happen on our side, there is a high probability that an adequate response will follow. Of course, it would be best if the explosive situation on the border with Belarus was deescalated. Official contacts between the two countries have been suspended. Even border crossings no longer communicate with each other, and in the event of a possible incident, it is not possible to exchange the necessary information. That is why Minister Artis Pabriks, on behalf of the Latvian government, addressed the leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, through the media. Belarus must withdraw additional forces from the border and resume cooperation between border guards, as set out in the 2014 agreement. They have to sit at the negotiating table, and without sniper rifles and machine guns. Otherwise, new allied sanctions will be imposed on Belarus. For the time being, however, there is no indication that Operation Sluice is suspended. Every day, new groups of criminals try to enter Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Since August 10, when a state of emergency was declared in connection with the migrant crisis, 742 people have been deterred from crossing the state border illegally. Simply put, they are scared away with threats and the sight of weapons. Of course, there are no statistics on how many have managed to enter the European Union getting past the internal affairs and defense forces at the border. But 25 criminals were officially admitted into the country on humanitarian grounds. Neatkarīgā has already reported that it is enough for one person in the group to be in poor health for all his "relatives" to be allowed into the country. That is why children, women and the sick are taken along on this dangerous road.
*****
Be the first to read interesting news from Latvia and the world by joining our Telegram and Signal channels.