Lithuania names country behind most cigarette smuggling. And it is not Belarus
Gedrius Mišutis, official spokesman for Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service, has named the country from which the majority of illegal cigarettes intercepted by local border guards have originated this year. It turns out that the primary source of smuggled cigarettes for Lithuania was not Belarus at all.
Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre, stated that this Monday, 24th November, saw the most intense attack of smuggled balloons recorded for the entire month of November. It caused a disruption to Vilnius Airport’s air traffic overnight.
According to Mišutis, the spokesman for the Lithuanian border service, seven smuggled consignments were seized in Lithuania over the past 24 hours, with nearly 600 cases of cigarette smuggling from Belarus recorded in total this year. Meanwhile, it emerged that the smugglers’ balloons were also detected near the Latvian border that night. According to Latvian interior ministry authorities, a further seven smuggled balloons, presumed to have drifted from Belarus, were seized on Sunday night into Monday. Each contained, on average, approximately 60,000 illegal cigarettes.
Furthermore, in a commentary to Lithuanian radio station LRT, Mišutis boasted that smuggling is now being detected more effectively than before: this year, border guards have seized three times more cigarettes than last year – about 4 million packets. In connection with the aerial smuggling, 116 individuals have been detained, with nearly 300 people detained in total this year for illegally transporting cigarettes across the border.
However, according to Mišutis, the main source of smuggling this year was, for the first time, not Belarus, but Latvia. It is the internal border with this country that has attracted the most attention from Lithuanian border services this year.
«Out of the more than 4 million seized packets of cigarettes, more than 2 million were seized from Latvia,» stated Mišutis.
In his view, the situation with border smuggling has changed for the better thanks to «the state’s resolute actions to strengthen border protection» – the creation of a physical barrier on the border with Belarus, the installation of video surveillance systems, and the closure of border checkpoints, particularly the railway crossing through which, according to Mišutis, «hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contraband goods» had passed.
«Smugglers no longer have routes to transport these goods by land. Those routes are closed,» declared Mišutis, explaining why the use of balloons for this purpose has increased.
Previously, Telegraf.news reported that Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė had made an urgent statement, suggesting that authorities in a neighbouring country might once again close the border with Belarus. The politician cited the latest balloon incident at the border as the reason, while accusing Minsk of a «hybrid attack.»