Latvia's frontier with Belarus has not gone a single day without an attempted illegal crossing since late March, according to Radio Svaboda, RFE/RL's Belarusian service. The country's border service ties the sustained pressure to a state-run hybrid campaign, and its chief has named Latvia's support for Ukraine among the reasons the country has become the primary target.

An unbroken run since March

Latvia's State Border Guard has logged migrant crossing attempts from Belarus for 111 consecutive days, a Pozirk analysis of the agency's operational data found. Radio Svaboda reported the tally on 15 July.

Between 25 March and 13 July, officers recorded 7,791 attempts — an average of 70 a day. In winter the traffic was a fraction of that. From 1 January to 24 March, a span of 83 days, the agency counted just 141 attempts, or 1.7 a day. Pozirk calculated a year-to-date total of 7,932, or about 41 daily, while Latvia's State Border Guard listed 7,933.

On 13 July, the entire EU-Belarus frontier saw 42 attempts, 41 of them on the Latvian line and one on the Polish. The day before brought 41, then 87 on 11 July and 103 on 10 July, with Latvia taking the bulk each time. Lithuania has seen no crossing activity for five days.

Across the bloc's Belarus border, neighboring states logged 9,116 attempts since January. Latvia absorbed 87% of them. Lithuania took 9.9%, or 904, and Poland 3.1%, or 280.

Explore further

Latvia exposes Belarusian military’s direct role in weaponizing migration

Riga's border chief points to its stance on Ukraine

Latvia is the number-one target in a hybrid war unleashed by the Belarusian authorities, State Border Guard head Guntis Pujāts told Delfi. The situation at the border, he said, presents serious challenges.

Pujāts said the migrant smugglers have grown more aggressive, pushing officers toward harsher detention methods and a need for wider support from the National Armed Forces. Border guards stopped roughly 7,600 people from crossing illegally this year, far more than in the same period of 2025.He said one of the causes of such pressure is Latvia's consistent support for Ukraine and its condemnation of Russian aggression. 

A campaign running since 2021

Neighboring EU states treat the flow as a hybrid attack organized by the regimes in Minsk and Moscow. Lukashenka has repeatedly said Belarusian guards will not stop migrants heading for the bloc through his country.

The crisis began in 2021, when thousands of people from Asian and African countries started crossing from Belarus into Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in an organized way. It has continued at varying intensity since, and dozens of migrants have died along these borders.

Reform UK presents itself as the people’s voice while opaque digital wealth flows around it. That makes transparency a democratic necessity

Twice now, the Guardian’s questions about Reform UK’s finances appear to have been pre-empted by stories friendly to the party. This paper revealed in April that Nigel Farage received £5m from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne – but an interview with Reform UK’s leader, claiming he needed the cash “for security”, was published hours earlier in the Telegraph. Then, Richard Tice’s suggestion that the National Crime Agency (NCA) had leaked the MP’s bank statements landed on the Telegraph site on Tuesday, just before the Guardian said bankers had reported the £5m donation to law enforcement over money-laundering concerns.

A party serious about probity would have no issue answering questions about such cash. Instead, Reform uses a pliant media outlet to frame scrutiny as persecution. In Mr Farage’s world, the questions become the scandal, not the large undisclosed sums. That is a warning about how an authoritarian nationalist party that aspires to govern treats accountability: not as a democratic obligation, but as an attack.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.