00:00Lithuania's foreign minister, Kestutis Budris, has called on the European Union to deepen its sanctions against Belarus
00:08in response to recent balloon incursions that his government has described as hybrid attacks.
00:14He spoke to Euronews hours after the Baltic country closed its border
00:19and instructed its military to shoot down cigarette-smuggling balloons entering from neighbouring Belarus.
00:25If we cannot deter by denial, we cannot just deny our Eurospace and the entering, then we have to deter by punishment.
00:34And these leverages of punishment, these tools are sanctions, first of all.
00:39And the very exact and strong message, it is not allowed and you will suffer damage for what you are doing,
00:46because you are causing damage on our side.
00:48Belarus already faces EU sanctions in response to its autocratic drift and complicity in Russia's war in Ukraine.
00:57But the foreign minister called for further restrictions on the country's aviation and banking sectors.
01:03The balloon incursions are the latest in a series of provocations which the West attributes to the Kremlin and its proxies.
01:11Drones and military aircrafts have also been spotted across the eastern flank and further inwards in Denmark, Belgium and Germany.
01:19Minister Budris backed European initiatives to spend more on monitoring and shielding its borders from such incursions
01:25and warned Western European countries against complacency.
01:31And if someone has doubts why to invest here, then that person or that country will see the consequences in their land,
01:39because it will go deeper into Europe.
01:42All these provocations, as we've seen already, airports being shut down in Denmark, Netherlands, elsewhere because of the drones.
01:48If we cannot counter it on the front line, it will go into the side.
01:53So that's time to invest it here and to build the resilience that can be then copied elsewhere in the in the continental Europe.
01:59So we'll continue this view today.
02:00Thanks, everyone.
Comments