"That riskiest section, which is about 100 km, where it’s the easiest to get into the country and which is causing the biggest tensions for our services, it can be fully completed, meaning both the concertina and the physical barrier, based on our plans, in early spring next year, but next year the focus would be more on the finishing touches," the prime minister said during the Government Hour in the parliament on Thursday.
"And the physical installation of the barrier, especially if the army allocated additional forces for the installation of concertina, I believe, could be done this year by the end of the time when construction work can be done, meaning, by the end of the fall. I think a substantial part of that work will be done, probably even the whole of it," Simonyte said.
Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite says some 25 km of concertina have been already installed on the border.
The prime minister says the work needs to be stepped up, and the interior minister said talks are underway with the National Defense Ministry on the deployment of additional human resources for this work.
Lithuania decided to build 3-story-high concertina barrier along a 502-km section of its border with Belarus and install a fence beside it in response to a spike in illegal migrants from Belarus. Lithuania has a 678.82 border with Belarus.
Vilnius accuses the Minsk regime of orchestrating the unprecedented migration influx, calling it "hybrid aggression".