NATO Special Task Force on Combating Hybrid Threats completes work in Lithuania

VILNIUS (TASS): A group of experts on countering hybrid threats of the North Atlantic Alliance, sent at the request of Vilnius to the republic, completed its work in Lithuania. This was announced on Tuesday by the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense.

“NATO experts met with representatives of government agencies, the army, the academic community and non-governmental organizations, visited the area of ??the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, analyzed the situation and issued their recommendations,” the message says. The nature of these recommendations is not specified.

The NATO Special Task Force on Combating Hybrid Threats has been in Lithuania since September 7. Its strength was not named. It was said to include experts in cyber security, security policy planning and strategic communications.

The Expert Group on Hybrid Threats was created by NATO in 2018. In 2019, she was involved in analyzing the situation in Montenegro.

Since the beginning of this year, more than 4 thousand illegal migrants from Asian and African countries who entered Lithuania from the territory of Belarus have been detained at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border. This is 50 times more than in the entire 2020. Vilnius believes that the migration crisis was provoked by Minsk, and they call it a hybrid attack on Lithuania. In this regard, Vilnius asked to send a NATO team to combat hybrid threats to Lithuania.

At the end of May, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that his country served as a barrier to the transfer of illegal migrants to Europe, however, given the political pressure from the West, Minsk may wonder whether it is worth continuing to do so.