Lithuania has accused the Belarusian leadership of the targeted smuggling of migrants into the EU and called for new sanctions against Minsk.

"This is not a refugee crisis, but a hybrid warfare against us," said Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis in an interview with the newspaper Die Welt.

If the migration situation in Lithuania worsened, the EU would have to impose “new and tougher” punitive measures against Belarus.

The Belarusian ruler Alexandr Lukashenko had repeatedly threatened the EU to allow refugees from war zones to pass in response to the sanctions imposed on his country.

Lithuania, which has an almost 680 kilometer long border with Belarus, is particularly hard hit.

Hundreds of migrants had illegally crossed the border in the past few weeks.

Lithuania has therefore recently tightened its asylum regulations.

Migrants allegedly recruited abroad

Landsbergis accused the Belarusian leadership of getting rich by smuggling migrants into the EU.

Belarusian companies are active in the Middle East and Africa, organizing migrants' travel to the EU via Belarus.

"So one of our neighboring countries is selling tickets for 7,000 or 8,000 euros, which people are supposed to use illegally to enter the EU," said the Foreign Minister.

This is a "profitable business" for Minsk.

In order to smash the "smuggling network", the migrants who entered via Belarus had to be sent back to their countries of origin "as quickly as possible," Landsbergis said.

"This is the only way we can show that an illegal trip to Europe is not worthwhile and discourages people from taking it."

The Lithuanian government is a sharp critic of Lukashenko.

In addition, the EU and NATO states have taken in many activists persecuted in Belarus, including opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya.

Lukashenko, who has ruled for almost three decades, was officially declared the winner after the election in August 2020 despite massive allegations of fraud.

This sparked unprecedented mass protests, which were brutally suppressed by the security forces.

In June the EU put comprehensive economic sanctions in place against Belarus.

The background to this was the forced landing of a Ryanair plane in Minsk, during which the blogger Roman Protassewitsch, who was critical of the government, was arrested.