On Tuesday, August 18, as part of Operation “VILKATIS”, a mobile patrol and the State Border Guard spotted and detained an individual whose vehicle contained five people without valid documents (illegal border crossers). During the week since Operation “VILKATIS” began, 450 individuals have been prevented from illegally crossing the border of Latvia.
Section 285, Paragraph 3 of the Criminal Law stipulates that for the unlawful transportation of a person across the border an individual may be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of two to ten years.
“The situation at the border remains tense. During the past week, new cases of damage to the border fence and infrastructure were detected, and numerous individuals were prevented from crossing the border illegally. Today, thanks to the support of soldiers from the National Armed Forces, one smuggler was also detained,” emphasized Colonel Arvis Zīle, Head of the Crisis Management Centre, who is coordinating the operation.
Soldiers and National Guard personnel of the National Armed Forces carry out border surveillance and patrol duties, provide logistics and transportation support, and conduct engineering works necessary to strengthen security along the country's external border.
Since August 14, border guards, in cooperation with State Police officers, have been conducting planned ground-layer scanning with ground-penetrating radar along the Belarusian border to detect irregular changes in soil structure, including possible underground objects, cavities, and tunnel locations.
As part of the operation, public engagement has been significant, with residents actively reporting observations of suspicious individuals and activities in their local areas.
To ensure the security of Latvia’s eastern border, Operation “VILKATIS” was launched on August 11 as a targeted and coordinated Latvian response to the hybrid threat posed by the instrumentalization of illegal migration from Belarus. Its objective is to substantially reduce the number of illegal border crossing incidents in the eastern part of Latvia and prevent such incidents in the future.