Łukaszanka attacks Poland. Polish and Lithuanian trucks banned from entering Belarus

On Friday, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko issued a decree banning the movement of trucks and tractors registered in Lithuania and Poland on the territory of Belarus, the BNS news agency reported on Monday. The restrictions are to apply until December 31, 2027.

This is a blow to transport companies that transport goods from China to the EU via Russia and Belarus. Many of them are registered in the Baltic countries and Poland and actively employ residents of Central Asia, Georgia and Ukraine, noted the ELTA agency.

Lithuanian media emphasized that this is a reaction to the decisions of Lithuania and Poland to close the border with Belarus. Last week, Lithuania closed its border following increasing incidents involving weather and smuggling balloons entering Lithuanian airspace from Belarus.

Polish government spokesman Adam Szłapka told PAP last Thursday that Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene agreed that Poland would open its border crossings with Belarus “around mid-November.” On Tuesday, Prime Minister Tusk announced that in November the government would be ready to open two border crossings with Belarus: in Bobrowniki and Kuźnica. He then noted that the opening would be “on a trial basis” after consultations with Lithuania.

Secretary General of the International Transport and Logistics Alliance (TTLA), Povilas Driżas, said the situation was extremely complicated.

“Our trade relations are already starting to feel the negative effects of this border closure,” Drizas told BNS. In his opinion, “Lithuania may gradually disappear from the logistics and trade map.”

Olegas Tarasovas, vice president of the National Association of Road Carriers “Linava”, told public broadcaster LRT that “the situation is close to a disaster and if the border is not opened, Lithuanian carriers will be pushed out of the market.”

The decree on the ban was published on the Belarusian National Legal Portal. It states that semi-trailers registered in Poland and Lithuania, as well as passenger cars registered in Poland and performing international transport on the basis of individual consignment notes or international CMR consignment notes, are subject to a traffic ban in the territory of Belarus. The restrictions will apply until December 31, 2027.

The Polish-Belarusian road border crossing in Kuźnica was closed on November 9, 2021, after Belarus, with the participation of migrants, carried out an attack on this crossing. From February 9, 2023, the crossing in Bobrowniki is closed. They were closed after the Belarusian regime sentenced an activist of the Union of Poles in Belarus, journalist Andrzej Poczobut. The crossing in Połowce has been closed since the pandemic. Currently, only railway crossings in Kuźnica and Siemianówka are open, through which only freight traffic passes.

From Vilnius Aleksandra Akińczo (PAP)

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