Belarusian Foreign Ministry sees in Lithuania's border closure Vilnius' desire to receive money from EU
MINSK. Oct 29 (Interfax) - The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has issued a statement accusing Lithuania of seeking a large monetary amount from the European Union in the wake of the closure of the border with Belarus.
"Lithuanian politicians expect to get a large monetary amount from the EU budget using the same tactics of escalating tensions [as Poland did earlier]," the statement said.
Minsk said that following the high-ranking EU officials' visit to the Polish border and loud statements about the "catastrophic" situation and Warsaw's closure of the Belarusian-Polish border, Poland was allocated a more than 43-million-euro loan for defense needs.
"As of now, amid hysterical talk about creating a kind of 'drone wall' with a multibillion budget, Lithuania is taking similar steps by closing the border with Belarus," it said.
The ministry said that the issue of smuggling is typical for most borders around the world, but even the Lithuanian prosecutor general intentionally avoids the wording about "organized nature" and "hybrid attack" precisely due to the lack of any evidence.
The ministry invited both Lithuania and the EU to take joint measures to address the issue of smuggling. "This requires establishing normal cooperation, in particular, on urgent issues that require proper information exchange between the corresponding services. Criminal smugglers and their customers should be sought primarily on the Lithuanian side," it said.
The ministry is convinced that by closing the land checkpoints, Vilnius "clearly demonstrated its real attitude to the European values of freedom of movement of people."
"Given the scale of the planned funding of defense projects in Eastern Europe, we do not rule out that as a result of this artificially created crisis situation, we will learn about further corruption schemes in disbursing funds allocated by the EU," the statement said.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Lithuanian government decided to close the border with Belarus until November 30.
