Lithuania, located at the eastern end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ), announced that it would close part of its border with Belarus in response to the large-scale deployment of the Russian mercenary company Wagner Group in Belarus.
Arnoldas Abramavicius, Lithuania’s Deputy Interior Minister, appeared on his country’s radio broadcast on the 4th (local time) and said that a final decision would be made soon and that he planned to close two of the six checkpoints on the Belarusian border, according to dpa news agency . .
Laurinas Kasunas, chairman of Lithuania’s national security and defense committee, also said that closing some border checkpoints would definitely happen, saying it was only a matter of time.
Lithuania shares a 680 km border with Belarus. Of these, 100 km are riverbanks and lakes without physical barriers.
“If you reduce the number of people passing through, you can reduce the threat,” said border guard deputy chief Saulis Nekrasevicius.
Lithuania has decided to revoke the residence permits of 1,000 nationals of Belarus and Russia staying in the country, considering them a security threat. Lithuania made the decision after surveying 58,000 Belarusians and 16,000 Russians residing in Lithuania about their views on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reported.
Lithuania, like neighboring Poland, is concerned about the 4,000 Wagner mercenaries deployed in Belarus after the failed armed rebellion by the leader of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozin.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said먹튀검증 during a visit to the Polish Naval Operations Headquarters that day, “The Wagner Group cannot be viewed as a private army in the true sense of the word.” said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian military maritime drones attacked a naval base in Novorossiysk, Russia’s main Black Sea export port, causing serious damage to a Russian warship, Reuters reported. According to reports, Ukrainian intelligence officials claimed that the Ukrainian Security Service ( SBU ) and the Navy attacked the Russian fleet landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak with an unmanned (drone) boat and disabled it.
“A maritime drone loaded with 450 kg of high-explosive TNT attacked the Olenegorsky Gornyak,” said an official.
The American CNN and the British BBC reported that they confirmed the video of the Olenegorsky Gornyak being towed into the port with a severe tilt to the port near the port of Novorossiysk.
“The maritime drones traveled 740 km to Novorossiysk,” said Andriy Ryzenko, a former Ukrainian naval captain and naval consultant. Reuters said it was Ukraine’s first attempt to attack a major Russian port facility.
The Olenegorsky Gornyak is one of three amphibious ships deployed by the Russian fleet in the Black Sea after Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year. She is a landing ship built by the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and has a total length of 112.5m.
Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that it had repelled an underwater drone attack by Ukrainian forces during the night.
Novorossiysk Port is Russia’s oil and grain export hub. An average of 1.8 million barrels of crude oil from Russia and Kazakhstan is exported here every day, which accounts for about 2% of global supply.
Tensions between the two countries on the Black Sea and nearby ports have escalated since Russia last month announced the end of the Black Sea Grain Agreement, which opened the way for Ukraine’s grain exports. Russia attacked a port town in the southern Ukrainian province of Odessa, destroying port facilities and grain warehouses, and Ukraine responded by launching drone strikes on the Russian capital Moscow and Crimea.