This is in marked contrast to the situation in Belarus. While the latter country has no border with Estonia, it does border Latvia, and consequently the EU.

The hybrid tactics employed for several years by the Aleksandr Lukashenko regime in Belarus — exploiting vulnerable people who have migrated from third countries and inducing them to cross the border into the EU — seems to be continuing.

This week, eight illegal migrants were detained in Latvia — six of them Bangladeshi nationals, two of them Indian nationals, LSM reported.

The incident is noteworthy in that the people were apprehended less than 40 kilometers from Riga, in the Ogre district — well over 200 kilometers from Latvia's border with Belarus.

Peter Maran, commander of the Police and Border Guard Board's (PPA) Southeast border checkpoint, said in Estonia's case, illegal border crossers have all but disappeared from its eastern border with the Russian Federation.

There are several reasons for this: First, improved border infrastructure and surveillance capabilities on the Estonian side, twinned with greater vigilance on the Russian side of the border – some illegal entrants will be Russian citizens dodging the draft for Vladimir Putin's "Special military operation" in Ukraine, now over 1,550 days old.

"The Russian Federation has also been developing its border infrastructure. Another important issue is certainly that, due to the war in Ukraine, the Russian Federation needs its young men at the front, and they are making efforts to ensure that potential soldiers do not flee Russia across the green line into Europe. For this reason, the Russian border is also very, very heavily guarded," Maran said.

This has been accompanied by greater attention paid by Russian officials to what is happening on the Estonian side of the border. "Our daily challenges are related to GPS signal interference, which complicates our border guarding and surveillance activities. We have also noticed that the Russian border guard is showing increasing interest in our activities and officials. However, there is currently no migrant pressure like there was years ago," Maran went on.

If anything, the reverse is the case: Maran stated cases have been observed supporting intel on Russia that it is barring third-country nationals from moving onward from Russian territory, in the way that this week's case had seen third-country nationals cross into the EU from Belarus.

"At present I cannot provide any specific examples, but the fact is that the war is affecting the Russian Federation's methods of guarding its border," Maran concluded.

Latvia shares a border both with Belarus and with Russia. "If you compare the Latvia-Belarus border and the Latvia-Russia border, the situations there are very different. Illegal border crossings are not very common on the Latvia-Russia border, but pressure on the Latvia-Belarus border is constant," Maran noted on this.

LSM reported that as of Tuesday close to 4,000 people have been prevented from illegally entering. 2025's figure was 12,000.

Though it denies doing so, since summer 2021 the Belarus government has been sponsoring migrants, primarily from the Middle East and North Africa, to cross its borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, all of whom are EU member states. The EU views it as a type of hybrid warfare following a further deterioration of relations between the bloc and Minsk after the 2020 presidential elections, and heightened further by Belarus being Russia's ally in its invasion of Ukraine – which it also borders to the south.

The tactic is thought to be used to inflame tensions inside the EU and help grow the support of far-right parties and groups in those countries.

Tens of thousands of unauthorized border crossing attempts were recorded in the last five months of 2021, and at least 20 migrants perished during the ensuing winter, both due to weather conditions and abuse from border authorities. While illegal border crossing numbers have never returned to those seen in the latter part of 2021, they have not fallen to pre-crisis levels either, and from spring last year, the numbers reportedly began climbing again.

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