Along its eastern border, a fence separates the Baltic state of Latvia from Belarus. Border guards patrol the area, surveillance systems are being expanded and military planners are building defensive infrastructure designed to slow a potential ground attack.
For Latvia, these are no longer separate challenges.
Irregular migration, drones and the threat of military confrontation are increasingly being viewed as parts of the same wider security problem facing NATO’s eastern flank.
“We have, unfortunately, very aggressive neighbours: Russia and Belarus,” Guntis Pujāts, Chief of the State Border Guard, told Euronews.
Latvian border guards have faced a surge in irregular migration this summer. They stopped nearly 10,000 attempts to cross the border this year, with more than 100 attempts recorded on some days, including 16 August.
Latvian officials accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka’s regime of facilitating the movement of migrants to the country’s borders, describing the flows as a hybrid attack aimed at putting pressure on the European Union.
Migration numbers rising before election
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have all seen an increase in the number of people attempting to cross their borders from Belarus since 2021. But the scale of the flows in each country has varied and the Latvian president says that is not a coincidence.
“Partly this is because we have elections in October,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said during a visit to the Latvian-Belarusian border. For the regime in Belarus, “it’s very important somehow to show that we are not able to cope with the pressure. To somehow indirectly influence the electoral process,” he added.
That’s not the only reason. Latvia had delays in completing its border security infrastructure, leaving it more vulnerable to irregular crossings. The 173-kilometre border was fully fenced this year, but final work to complete technological surveillance systems is due to continue until the end of the year.
Latvian border guards say they also need more personnel, with up to 200 additional employees still required.
Until now, neighbouring countries have provided support, sending their own border guards to help patrol the border.
“We are supported by Lithuanian, Estonian and Finnish border guards. And I plan to sign this agreement next month with Poland,” Pujāts said. “So our region supports each other.”
But Pujāts says there is still not enough understanding among some European Union countries about the scale of the situation.
“Unfortunately, there is not enough understanding about the current situation,” he said, despite migrants usually planning to move further to the West.
“Latvia is not a target country. We are guarding, you know, Germans, Belgians, Netherlands here in Latvia,” Pujāts said, adding that migrants want to use Latvia “as a transit country.”
“But we do not allow them to do this,” he said.
Preparing for a wider conflict
But the concerns extend beyond migration.
Together with Lithuania and Estonia, Latvia is developing the Baltic Defence Line, a network of defensive infrastructure intended to slow a potential ground invasion from Russia or Belarus.
The plans include anti-tank obstacles, ditches and other defensive positions, as well as preparations for the use of drones and plans for minefields.
But military officials say a conventional ground invasion is not necessarily the biggest immediate threat. Hybrid attacks are a growing concern.
“If you look at the threat perception, what we are seeing now, of course, most likely…is potential hybrid activities,” Latvia’s National Armed Forces commander, Lieutenant General Kaspars Pudāns, told Euronews.
“Currently, it doesn’t require much of resources to recruit some local population, even not knowing what they’re conducting, somehow creating some diversion activities, sabotage activities,” he continued. “And it’s not only physical ones. It could also be in the cyber domain, in the information domain.”
That does not mean Latvia is not preparing for potential conventional attack scenarios.
“We understand that we have a very credible alliance, our allies already here in the Baltic states and Latvia, also particularly a very multinational force which is present here. They are part of our daily lives. They are not only training in our bases, they are part of our defence planning, rehearsing our defence plans,” he said.
Drone threat
The NATO alliance’s support was recently put to the test when a drone entered Latvian airspace on 14 August. Jets from NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission shot it down after it entered from Belarus near the village of Rugāji in northeastern Latvia.
Latvia says it is better prepared than it was several years ago.
But officials also acknowledge that they cannot rule out a serious escalation.
“We are much better prepared, but we never can rule out anything. We see that NATO has now updated its procedures, NATO air policing is working,” the president said.
“But, you know, this is the reality,” Rinkēvičs added.