CYIL vol. 13 (2022)

VIOLETA VASILIAUSKIENĖ CYIL 13 ȍ2022Ȏ Estonia had already send 100 km of barbed wire to Lithuania to help cope with a wave of migrants from Belarus. 21 Ukraine has also sent 38 tonnes of barbed wire to Lithuania. 22 After the decision of Lithuanian government to contain the flows of migration they diverted towards the border of Poland. Belarusian authorities tried to build up pressure by accumulating large numbers of migrants by Polish border. In September 2021, there were around 10 000 migrants waiting for opportunity to cross the border from Belarus to Poland. 23 Since the beginning of the year 2021, the border guards had recorded over 32,000 thousand attempts to illegally cross the Polish-Belarusian border, of which nearly 17,300 in October, almost 7,700 in September and over 3,500 in August. 24 On 9 November 2021, taking into account the situation, when hundreds of migrants tried to forcibly enter Poland from Belarus and it resulted into clashes with the Polish security forces, Lithuanian Parliament declared a state of emergency in its border region with Belarus, first time that this legal regime had been used in Lithuania since independence. 25 The legal provisions prohibited entry in the area within 5 km of the border without Lithuanian State Border Guard Service’s approval and authorised the border guards to use “mental coercion” and proportionate physical force to contain the surge. Engineering mass influx of migrants as hybrid attack The definition (or description) of hybrid threats indicates that “Hybrid threats (or hybrid warfare, hybrid conflicts, hybrid tactics, hybrid confrontations, hybrid operations and other hybrid ‘things’) involve the orchestrated use of a wide range of instruments of power to coerce an opponent, falling within the entire spectrum from peace to war.” 26 Hybrid actions may manifest themselves as cyber-attacks, economic blackmail, information warfare and exploitation of ethnic divisions 27 , target various parts of society. In the opinion of EU, the concept of hybrid threat “aims to capture the mixture of coercive and subversive activity, conventional and unconventional methods (i.e. diplomatic, military, economic, technological), which can be used in a coordinated manner by state or non-state actors to achieve specific objectives while remaining below the threshold of formally declared warfare.” 28 21 ‘Estonia to send Lithuania 100 kilometers of barbed wire’ ERR (24 July 2021) accessed 29 May 2022. 22 ‘Ukraine sends barbed wire to Lithuania for Belarus border’ France24 (12 August 2021) accessed 31 May 2022. 23 ‘Польша насчитала в Беларуси 10 000 мигрантов, стремящихся в ЕС ’ [Poland counts 10,000 migrants seeking to enter EU in Belarus] DW (6 September 2021) accessed 31 May 2022. 24 ‘Kolejna próba sforsowania granicy. Strzały pod Białowieżą’ [Another attempt to cross the border. Shots near Białowieża] Rzeczpospolita (11 November 2021) accessed 31 May 2022. 25 ‘Lithuania declares state of emergency on border with Belarus’ LRT (9 November 2021) accessed 31 May 2022. 26 BEKKERS, F., MESSEN, R., LASSCHE, D. ‘Hybrid Conflicts: the New Normal’. TNO – innovation for life accessed 31 May 2022. 27 Ibid. 28 Joint Communication of European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to the European Parliament and the Council “Joint Framework on countering hybrid threats: a European Union response”. JOIN (2016) 18 final. accessed 31 May 2022.

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