New Estonian police unit deploys to assist at Latvia-Belarus border

Latvian Border Guard special unit officers patrol along the fence at Latvia-Belarus border near Robeznieki, Latvia August 8, 2023. Photo: Ints Kalnins / Reuters / Scanpix

As the migratory pressure on the Latvian-Belarusian border has not decreased, the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) on Monday sent a new team to assist the ESTPOL10 police mission there on a rotational basis.

The PPA officers will be deployed to the Robežnieki area, where there have been the most illegal border crossing attempts recently. The first rotation of ESTPOL10 was working there, while ESTPOL9 also helped the southern neighbors in the same area last summer.

The team's tasks, similarly to the previous rotation, are primarily to patrol the Latvian-Belarusian border. As in the past, Latvia has also requested that a team of people with crowd control training be assembled.

In early May, the Latvian border authority asked the PPA for help to prevent a recent surge in migrants from Belarus. The PPA sent a police mission, ESTPOL10, to Latvia to help the southern neighbors, which worked in Latvia for two weeks. As the migration pressure on the Latvian border has not decreased, the PPA sent a second rotation of ESTPOL10 to Latvia on Monday.

The Estonian border guard chief, Veiko Kommusaar, said that the situation on the Latvian border is not just Latvia's concern -- it is also in our interests that only those who have reason to be here can cross the border of the European Union and NATO.

«The first rotation of ESTPOL10 received nothing but praise from the Latvian border authority -- they managed to catch both people who had crossed the border illegally and a local person involved in transporting illegal border crossers. I am convinced that in a few weeks I will hear similar praise for the second rotation,» Kommusaar added.

Kirill Tšepanov, head of the second rotation of ESTPOL10, expressed hope that settling in would not take long.

«I have been to the same region to help our southern neighbors in 2023 as part of ESTPOL8, and thanks to that, it is certainly possible to start substantive work without a long settling-in period,» Tšepanov said.