Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
NATO’s eastern frontier is on a knife-edge as border provocations turn dangerous.
NATO’s eastern frontier has long absorbed hybrid pressure from across the Belarusian border, but last week armed masked men crossed into Latvia itself.
The incident unfolded in two phases on the night of October 5-6. According to Latvian military officials, armed, masked escorts first pushed roughly 20 migrants toward the border fence and threatened Latvian soldiers who blocked their path.
Hours later, a similar group returned near the village of Matuliški, damaged an electrical panel and ripped out surveillance cameras before slipping back into Belarus.
Six days later, a previously unknown outfit calling itself Black Rus posted a video claiming responsibility, with a masked spokesperson warning that similar operations would continue along NATO’s borders with Belarus.
And on Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko told a readiness inspection of a special police brigade that he had nothing to do with any of it.
“We have nothing to do with this incursion onto their territory,” Lukashenko said, calling the Latvian account “entirely staged by the Latvians themselves as a media stunt to get money from the European Union.”
He added: “Such operations involving incursions into the territory of a neighboring state are impossible without authorization from the president. No such things have been authorized by me.”
The ‘fig leaf’ playbook
That last sentence drew attention in Riga. Jānis Sārts, director of NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, told Latvian public broadcaster LSM that the Black Rus video looked like an information operation tied to Belarusian and Russian authorities.
“These types of groups cannot exist in Belarus and Russia independently,” Sārts said.
Exiled Belarusian military journalist Dmitry Khalko drew the parallel more sharply, comparing Black Rus to the unmarked Russian troops who seized Crimea in 2014, the “little green men” Moscow spent weeks refusing to acknowledge.
“Now they have a fig leaf to cover themselves with and say it’s not us, we don’t know anything,” Khalko told LSM.
Latvia’s State Security Service opened criminal proceedings on October 9 over the alleged creation of a criminal organization intended to commit particularly serious crimes.
Lithuania moves troops to the Kaliningrad border
The reaction next door was fast. Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas announced on October 7 that up to 100 soldiers would be sent to the frontier with Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast, with the deployment starting the following day, initially for two weeks. “The order starts being implemented immediately,” Kaunas said.
Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas tied the deployment to the possibility of Russian mobilization and to the recent incident on the Latvia-Belarus border.
Latvia’s Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava called the October 5-6 provocation “particularly demonstrative and aggressive” compared with previous attempts. Latvian armed forces recorded 11,384 illegal crossing attempts from Belarus between January 1 and September 24, 2026.
