Belarus is introducing a visa-free travel arrangement with dozens of countries for a month, raising fears that neighbouring Poland and Lithuania might see a sudden increase in unauthorised migration.
The move is the result of a music festival, scheduled to be opened by Belarus’ President. Alexander Lukashenko. The normally secretive state has decrees that the citizens of 73 countries will be allowed to travel to Belarus without a visa to attend the concerts. Countries on the list are heavily skewed towards Middle Eastern and African nations whose populations typically try to enter the EU illegally, and the governments of Lithuania and Poland accuse the Belarusian authorities of orchestrating the situation to disrupt migration controls.
The visa scheme will run from July 4 to July 23rd. Stanislaw Zaryn, the acting deputy to Poland’s minister coordinator of special services, charged that Russia and Belarus might try to repeat the scheme with the month-long visa-free program.
“The migration facilitation introduced, if successful, may lead to an increase in the influx of people to Belarus, which Lukashenko’s services will use to intensify the hybrid operation conducted on our eastern border,” he wrote on Twitter.
The Lithuanian government thinks Belarus could try to provoke Middle Eastern migrants at the border during a July 11-12 NATO summit to be held in its capital, Vilnius.
