Belarus will restrict access to a strip of the border with Ukraine during June, July and August, it said on Friday. the country’s state border committee.
“The state border committee reports that to ensure border security, from June 1 to August 31, 2022 the entry and temporary stay of citizens in the border strip will be limited in the territory of the Bragin, Loevski and Joiniki districts in the Gomel region,” reads the statement posted on the organization’s website.
The measure will affect people who perform the task of protecting the state borders of Belarus, the note says.
Hours earlier, the first vice president of the committee, Igor Butkevich, denounced the presence of armed and unmarked people near the Belarusian borders.
“We register the presence of armed and solitary groups (…). They had no insignia, no uniform. Each group can be considered subversive. And we are prepared to take action against them,” he said.
Butkevich also denounced an “unprecedented militarization” of the neighboring countries of Belarus, which “is not about containment and is, in fact, a step to escalate the situation.”
In this context, he did not exclude the possibility of “provocations” involving incidents, even unintentional, involving the military forces of “neighbors”, alluding to Ukraine, and also NATO soldiers.
Source: Observadora
