‘A Ceuta-style surge is possible’: Border tensions on NATO’s eastern flank

Belarus-linked incidents trouble Latvia and Lithuania, where experts warn of security challenges.

Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics looks through night vision goggles during a visit to the Piedruja, Latvia border crossing with Belarus, August 17, 2026 [Ints Kalnins/Reuters]

Masked and armed men attempted to cross into Latvia from Belarus alongside 20 undocumented migrants on Monday.

“The (masked) escorts of the illegal migrants, who were located on the Belarusian side, were armed, issued threats to … soldiers, and also actively urged and drove the migrant group toward Latvia,” Janis Dombrava, Latvia’s interior minister, said on Tuesday.

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The group was stopped by the military.

Later, masked men managed to enter Latvia, destroying an electrical box and stealing surveillance cameras before returning to Belarus – an act of sabotage orchestrated by the country, according to Latvian officials. It was not clear if the second incident involved the same masked men as the first.

“Unlike many previous incidents, this time the provocation was particularly demonstrative and aggressive,” said Dombrava.

Since 2021, Belarus, Russia’s ally, has used migration as a tool to destabilise NATO’s eastern flank. It shares borders with Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia – the latter considered Europe’s weakest link.

“The crisis at the EU [European Union] border with Belarus has been ongoing for five years. The situation in Latvia has been deteriorating since May of this year,” Bartosz Chmielewski, Baltics expert from the Poland-based Centre for Eastern Studies told Al Jazeera. “There has been a steady rise in border violations and the number of people crossing.”

In September and October, “the number of border violations has already reached 12,000, a level equal to the total for the entire previous year”, he said.

According to Olevs Nikers, the Latvian president of the Baltic Security Foundation, “A Ceuta-style surge is physically possible, and we should plan for it.”

He was referring to the recent crossing of tens of thousands of people from Morocco to Spain.

“But sustained low-level pressure may be the more effective strategy. It creates exhaustion, budget pressure and friction between allies. Poland’s renewed controls on its border with Lithuania are already an example of this.”

He noted that Lithuania’s border with Belarus is four times longer than Latvia’s 173km (107 miles), yet pressure has been concentrated in Latvia.

“This looks less like spontaneous migration than a deliberate instrument, adjusted to test the neighbour perceived as most vulnerable,” Nikers said.

Any migration pressure from Belarus may cause bureaucratic chaos. Latvia, with a population of 1.8 million, would struggle with the reception, processing and providing medical aid to potential asylum seekers, he said.

The Latvia border with Belarus near Piedruja, Latvia [File: Ints Kalnins/Reuters]

According to the Polish Border Guard, in 2021, almost 40,000 people tried to cross the border from Belarus. Thousands more crossings of undocumented people were never recorded.

Before Russia’s war in Ukraine began in 2022, Belarus built a system – including travel agencies, plane connections and visa programmes – encouraging migrants seeking a better life to cross into the European Union from the east. The scheme targeted people from the Global South, or Latin America, Africa and much of Asia.

According to experts, the system has since been dismantled, but Belarus is still pressing migration when it can.

“A sudden influx of several thousand people into Latgale in winter would become a humanitarian and political problem before it became a border-security problem,” Nikers added.

Out of all of NATO’s eastern flank countries, Latvia seems the least prepared for provocations coming from the east.

“Until now, Latvia remained on the sidelines, as the pressure was primarily focused on Poland and Lithuania. Now it finds itself in the spotlight, partly because it is unprepared, its border infrastructure is inadequate, and the resources of the border guard – even with military support – are dwindling,” Chmielewski said.

“Latvia struggles to execute major infrastructure projects … It shares the shortest border with Belarus, but has been unable to complete the necessary infrastructure there; this is due both to the challenging terrain and the state’s limited operational capacity.”

Other experts said the migration pressure from Belarus might be a response to recent political developments in Latvia.

“The elections in Latvia were won by a coalition led by [Prime Minister] Andris Kulbergs, which seeks to maintain sanctions against Belarus. So Belarus uses both carrots and sticks to show it can destabilise the situation in the Baltics,” said Marta Jaroszewicz, assistant professor at the University of Warsaw’s Centre of Migration Research.

“For the past year, there have been periodic releases of Belarusian political prisoners, a process supported by the US administration. Belarus’s goal is the lifting of sanctions and the ability to transport its raw materials via Baltic ports, including through Poland. The objective is, in fact, the normalisation of trade.”

Russian and Belarusian pressure on the EU has also changed over the years as migration pressure is only one of the tactics employed. Others include disinformation, arson, the recruitment of local citizens and GPS jamming, according to Nikers.

He said that “2026 is increasingly about airspace and infrastructure. The most important change is that Russia has moved from targeting what we believe to targeting what we depend on: cables, grids, navigation and airspace. It is also increasingly operating below the Article 5 threshold.”

Established in the aftermath of World War II, NATO’s collective defence commitment, Article 5, was designed to ensure mutual protection among member states in response to the perceived threat of Soviet expansion, particularly in Eastern Europe during the early stages of the Cold War.

“This is an attempt at intimidation by Russia. And what deters Russia from aggressive actions on the eastern flank is the solidarity of European nations,” Chmielewski said. “That is what Russia fears most: that should it stage a more brazen provocation, solidarity will stretch from Lisbon to Stockholm, and the European Union will act as a united front.”

与白俄罗斯有关的事件困扰着拉脱维亚和立陶宛，专家警告称，两国面临安全挑战。

2026年8月17日，拉脱维亚总统埃德加斯·林克维奇在视察拉脱维亚与白俄罗斯的边境口岸皮耶德鲁亚时，透过夜视镜观察。[Ints Kalnins/路透社]

周一，一群蒙面持枪男子试图与 20 名无证移民一起从白俄罗斯越境进入拉脱维亚。

拉脱维亚内政部长亚尼斯·东布拉瓦周二表示：“在白俄罗斯一侧，（蒙面）护送非法移民的人员持有武器，威胁……士兵，并积极敦促和驱赶移民群体前往拉脱维亚。”

列表 1/4：欧洲是否正在为与俄罗斯爆发更大规模的战争做准备？

列表 2/4：俄罗斯警告北约，如果加里宁格勒被切断联系，可能采取核反击措施

拉脱维亚执政党以较大优势赢得议会选举（共4项，此为第3项）

（共4条）白俄罗斯释放25名政治犯，换取美国解除制裁（名单4）

该团伙被军方拦截。

随后，几名蒙面男子设法进入拉脱维亚，破坏了一个配电箱并盗走了监控摄像头，之后返回白俄罗斯——拉脱维亚官员称，这是一起由白俄罗斯策划的破坏事件。目前尚不清楚第二次事件是否与第一次事件涉及同一伙蒙面男子。

“与以往许多事件不同，这次的挑衅行为尤其具有挑衅性和侵略性，”多姆布拉瓦说。

自2021年以来，俄罗斯的盟友白俄罗斯一直利用移民作为工具来破坏北约东翼的稳定。白俄罗斯与俄罗斯、乌克兰、波兰、立陶宛和拉脱维亚接壤——拉脱维亚被认为是欧洲最薄弱的环节。

“欧盟与白俄罗斯边境的危机已经持续了五年。拉脱维亚的局势自今年五月以来一直在恶化，”波兰东方研究中心波罗的海问题专家巴尔托什·赫米列夫斯基告诉半岛电视台。“边境违规事件和越境人数都在稳步上升。”

他说，9月和10月，“边境违规事件数量已达到12000起，与上一年全年总数持平”。

波罗的海安全基金会拉脱维亚籍主席奥列夫·尼克尔斯表示：“休达式的移民潮在物理上是可能发生的，我们应该为此做好准备。”

他指的是最近数万人从摩洛哥涌入西班牙的事件。

“但持续的低强度施压或许是更有效的策略。它能造成盟友间的疲惫、预算压力和摩擦。波兰重新加强对立陶宛边境的管控就是一个例证。”

他指出，立陶宛与白俄罗斯的边界线比拉脱维亚的 173 公里（107 英里）长四倍，但压力却集中在拉脱维亚。

尼克尔斯说：“这看起来与其说是自发的迁徙，不如说是一种精心设计的手段，旨在测试被认为最脆弱的邻居。”

他表示，来自白俄罗斯的任何移民压力都可能导致官僚机构混乱。拉脱维亚人口仅有180万，在接收、处理和提供医疗援助方面将面临巨大挑战。

拉脱维亚皮德鲁贾附近与白俄罗斯的边境[文件：Ints Kalnins/路透社]

据波兰边防部队统计，2021年，近4万人试图从白俄罗斯越境。另有数千起非法越境事件未被记录在案。

在2022年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰之前，白俄罗斯建立了一套体系——包括旅行社、航班衔接和签证项目——鼓励寻求更好生活的移民从东方进入欧盟。该计划的目标群体是来自全球南方，即拉丁美洲、非洲和亚洲大部分地区的人们。

专家表示，该系统已被拆除，但白俄罗斯仍在有机会时推动移民。

“冬季数千人突然涌入拉特加莱，首先会演变成人道主义和政治问题，然后才会演变成边境安全问题，”尼克尔斯补充道。

在北约所有东翼国家中，拉脱维亚似乎是最缺乏应对来自东方挑衅准备的国家。

“此前，拉脱维亚一直置身事外，因为压力主要集中在波兰和立陶宛身上。现在它发现自己成了焦点，部分原因是它准备不足，边境基础设施不够完善，而且边防部队的资源——即使有军事支持——也在不断减少，”赫米列夫斯基说。

“拉脱维亚在执行重大基础设施项目方面举步维艰……它与白俄罗斯接壤，拥有世界上最短的边界线，但却未能完成必要的基础设施建设；这既是由于地形复杂，也是由于国家运营能力有限。”

其他专家表示，来自白俄罗斯的移民压力可能是对拉脱维亚近期政治局势发展的一种回应。

“拉脱维亚大选由安德里斯·库尔贝格斯总理领导的联盟赢得，该联盟寻求维持对白俄罗斯的制裁。因此，白俄罗斯软硬兼施，以表明其有能力破坏波罗的海地区的稳定，”华沙大学移民研究中心助理教授玛尔塔·雅罗谢维奇说。

“过去一年来，白俄罗斯政治犯陆续获释，这一过程得到了美国政府的支持。白俄罗斯的目标是解除制裁，并能够通过波罗的海港口（包括波兰）运输其原材料。事实上，其最终目标是实现贸易正常化。”

多年来，俄罗斯和白俄罗斯对欧盟施加的压力也发生了变化，移民压力只是其所采用的策略之一。据尼克尔斯称，其他策略还包括散布虚假信息、纵火、招募当地居民和干扰GPS定位系统。

他表示，“2026年越来越侧重于空域和基础设施。最重要的变化是，俄罗斯已经从攻击我们认为的目标转向攻击我们所依赖的目标：电缆、电网、导航和空域。而且，它越来越多地在第五条规定的门槛以下开展行动。”

北约集体防御承诺（即《北约》第五条）是在第二次世界大战后建立的，其目的是确保成员国之间相互保护，以应对当时人们认为苏联扩张的威胁，尤其是在冷战初期东欧地区。

“这是俄罗斯企图恐吓。而真正阻止俄罗斯在东翼采取侵略行动的，是欧洲各国的团结，”赫米列夫斯基说。“这正是俄罗斯最害怕的：如果它胆敢挑衅，团结的力量将从里斯本延伸到斯德哥尔摩，欧盟将组成统一战线。”