Since Russia’s Wagner Group paramilitary forces moved to Belarus after their failed mutiny in July, that country’s three NATO neighbors – Poland, Lithuania and Latvia – have been building up their border defenses and preparing for a range of possible provocations. 

In the case of Lithuania, authorities are planning for contingencies including infiltration of hostile migrants, cross-border shootings and a repetition of recent Belarusian helicopter flights that crossed into Polish airspace. Plans are also underway to close some border crossings.

Rustamas Liubajevas, the commander of Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service, assessed the current threat and described the measures taken to improve his service’s readiness in an interview Friday with VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: Thank you very much, General, for this opportunity. So, what is the situation on the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian border? 

Rustamas Liubajevas, commander of the State Border Guard Service of Lithuania: I would probably say that the situation is stable, however very tense, because we can see that Belarus is actively participating in the aggression against Ukraine. And the security situation in our region is very tense also because of the presence of the Wagner Group in Belarus.

VOA: In response to Wagner presence in Belarus, Poland recently sent an additional 2,000 troops to the border. Lithuania is planning to do something as well in that regard.

Liubajevas: Absolutely right. We plan to increase border security in terms of deploying additional resources, human resources, technical equipment. The border is being now surveilled, while on high alert, because we still believe that there might be certain provocations at the border organized by [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko’s regime together with the Kremlin regime, of course, also with participation of Wagner persons. Well, we also will increase our staff number at the border with Belarus.

VOA: There was a question of possibly closing the border. What is the status of that?

Liubajevas: Apparently, the decision will be taken to close down two of six border crossing points. But we’re talking about those at the border with Belarus used for cars to cross the border. I think it’s very important to be in very close contact with the partners like Poland, Latvia, also Estonia. And the decision will be taken together with the countries of the region.

VOA: Does it mean that other countries would close their border crossing as well with Belarus?

Liubajevas: At least, this was discussed on the highest level between the countries. There was an agreement to have additional consultations in case of provocations. We also have a border with the Russian Federation, as you might know. So this will be further discussed, and apparently an appropriate decision will be taken.

VOA: How close is your cooperation with other NATO countries in this regard?

Liubajevas: I would say very good cooperation, everyday contacts, exchange of information, exchange of intelligence as well. That proved to be a very, very good tool. And next week or one week later, we are also planning to have a trilateral meeting with Poland and Latvia on the level of border guard services in order to discuss further cooperation in case of provocations or aggregation of the security situation at the border.

VOA: You mentioned provocation. What kind of provocation are you expecting? 

Liubajevas: Well, we have identified a number of scenarios. For example, this might be a big group of migrants who might well act very aggressively and use weapons against border guards, infiltration of the smaller groups into Lithuania. Intentional border violations, like the one made just a couple of days ago at the border between Belarus and Poland, made by helicopter. So it might be persons, might be vehicles, it might be aircraft. So, also it might be shooting from the Belarusian territory at border guards on our side. We have identified courses of action for border guards — how they should act in that or another situation. We also plan to carry out, I would say, tactical exercises very soon together with our partners. 

VOA: How are you seeing Wagner mercenaries right now – as a threat?

Liubajevas: I would not overestimate the risks. We have to take a really good note of their presence, because they are a destabilization factor in the region. However, I would not overestimate the capacities and capabilities of the Wagner Group. And while I would not really expect open military aggression against an EU and NATO country, however, the risk of death and provocations, incidents at the border remains very high.

VOA: For a couple of years, your country, Poland, Estonia, other countries bordering Russia and Belarus have been experiencing this border crisis or border tension. How has the life of your unit changed since that started? And how much effort are you putting into changing and training new forces?

Liubajevas:  First of all, I have to say that the security system we have in our country proved to be very efficient, even taking into account those challenges of the last year starting from the pandemic, regular migration crisis, war in the neighborhood of Lithuania, and the security situation. We are much stronger than three and four years ago, from the technical perspective, because we have invested quite a lot of financial resources in order to strengthen our capacity and capabilities. And two or three years ago, we theoretically could speak about cooperation, and we had, well, some formal agreements, nice papers. But now we know that the system works. It works very good. And we are much stronger. 

VOA: And the last question, about Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine: How does it change the perspective and thinking in your country and other countries about the risks that Russia is posing to the region?

Liubajevas: Well, it has definitely changed, drastically, the mentality, changed the perception of the security situation by the public, as well as by the law enforcement community. From our perspective, speaking about border guards, we started to pay much more attention to the national security issues. In accordance with our national legislation, the State Border Guard Service became part of the national defense forces in case of military conflict, in case of aggression. So it’s a little bit challenging, but we really see now the high need of that work.
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IPVM, a U.S.-based security and surveillance industry research group, says the Chinese surveillance equipment maker Dahua is selling cameras with what it calls a “skin color analytics” feature in Europe, raising human rights concerns. 

In a report released on July 31, IPVM said “the company defended the analytics as being a ‘basic feature of a smart security solution.'” The report is behind a paywall, but IPVM provided a copy to VOA Mandarin. 

Dahua’s ICC Open Platform guide for “human body characteristics” includes “skin color/complexion,” according to the report. In what Dahua calls a “data dictionary,” the company says that the “skin color types” that Dahua analytic tools would target are ”yellow,” “black,” and ”white.”  VOA Mandarin verified this on Dahua’s Chinese website. 

The IPVM report also says that skin color detection is mentioned in the “Personnel Control” category, a feature Dahua touts as part of its Smart Office Park solution intended to provide security for large corporate campuses in China.  

Charles Rollet, co-author of the IPVM report, told VOA Mandarin by phone on August 1, “Basically what these video analytics do is that, if you turn them on, then the camera will automatically try and determine the skin color of whoever passes, whoever it captures in the video footage. 

“So that means the camera is going to be guessing or attempting to determine whether the person in front of it … has black, white or yellow — in their words — skin color,” he added.  

VOA Mandarin contacted Dahua for comment but did not receive a response. 

The IPVM report said that Dahua is selling cameras with the skin color analytics feature in three European nations. Each has a recent history of racial tension: Germany, France and the Netherlands.

‘Skin color is a basic feature’

Dahua said its skin tone analysis capability was an essential function in surveillance technology.  

 In a statement to IPVM, Dahua said, “The platform in question is entirely consistent with our commitments to not build solutions that target any single racial, ethnic, or national group. The ability to generally identify observable characteristics such as height, weight, hair and eye color, and general categories of skin color is a basic feature of a smart security solution.”  

IPMV said the company has previously denied offering the mentioned feature, and color detection is uncommon in mainstream surveillance tech products. 

In many Western nations, there has long been a controversy over errors due to skin color in surveillance technologies for facial recognition. Identifying skin color in surveillance applications raises human rights and civil rights concerns.  

“So it’s unusual to see it for skin color because it’s such a controversial and ethically fraught field,” Rollet said.  

Anna Bacciarelli, technology manager at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told VOA Mandarin that Dahua technology should not contain skin tone analytics.   

“All companies have a responsibility to respect human rights, and take steps to prevent or mitigate any human rights risks that may arise as a result of their actions,” she said in an email.

“Surveillance software with skin tone analytics poses a significant risk to the right to equality and non-discrimination, by allowing camera owners and operators to racially profile people at scale — likely without their knowledge, infringing privacy rights — and should simply not be created or sold in the first place.”  

Dahua denied that its surveillance products are designed to enable racial identification. On the website of its U.S. company, Dahua says, “contrary to allegations that have been made by certain media outlets, Dahua Technology has not and never will develop solutions targeting any specific ethnic group.” 

However, in February 2021, IPVM and the Los Angeles Times reported that Dahua provided a video surveillance system with “real-time Uyghur warnings” to the Chinese police that included eyebrow size, skin color and ethnicity.  

IPVM’s 2018 statistical report shows that since 2016, Dahua and another Chinese video surveillance company, Hikvision, have won contracts worth $1 billion from the government of China’s Xinjiang province, a center of Uyghur life. 

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission determined in 2022 that the products of Chinese technology companies such as Dahua and Hikvision, which has close ties to Beijing, posed a threat to U.S. national security. 

The FCC banned sales of these companies’ products in the U.S. “for the purpose of public safety, security of government facilities, physical security surveillance of critical infrastructure, and other national security purposes,” but not for other purposes.  

Before the U.S. sales bans, Hikvision and Dahua ranked first and second among global surveillance and access control firms, according to The China Project.  

‘No place in a liberal democracy’

On June 14, the European Union passed a revision proposal to its draft Artificial Intelligence Law, a precursor to completely banning the use of facial recognition systems in public places.  

“We know facial recognition for mass surveillance from China; this technology has no place in a liberal democracy,” Svenja Hahn, a German member of the European Parliament and Renew Europe Group, told Politico.  

Bacciarelli of HRW said in an email she “would seriously doubt such racial profiling technology is legal under EU data protection and other laws. The General Data Protection Regulation, a European Union regulation on Information privacy, limits the collection and processing of sensitive personal data, including personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin and biometric data, under Article 9. Companies need to make a valid, lawful case to process sensitive personal data before deployment.” 

“The current text of the draft EU AI Act bans intrusive and discriminatory biometric surveillance tech, including real-time biometric surveillance systems; biometric systems that use sensitive characteristics, including race and ethnicity data; and indiscriminate scraping of CCTV data to create facial recognition databases,” she said.  

In Western countries, companies are developing AI software for identifying race primarily as a marketing tool for selling to diverse consumer populations. 

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2020 that American cosmetics company Revlon had used recognition software from AI start-up Kairos to analyze how consumers of different ethnic groups use cosmetics, raising concerns among researchers that racial recognition could lead to discrimination.  

The U.S. government has long prohibited sectors such as healthcare and banking from discriminating against customers based on race. IBM, Google and Microsoft have restricted the provision of facial recognition services to law enforcement.  

Twenty-four states, counties and municipal governments in the U.S. have prohibited government agencies from using facial recognition surveillance technology. New York City, Baltimore, and Portland, Oregon, have even restricted the use of facial recognition in the private sector.  

Some civil rights activists have argued that racial identification technology is error-prone and could have adverse consequences for those being monitored. 

Rollet said, “If the camera is filming at night or if there are shadows, it can misclassify people.”  

Caitlin Chin is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank where she researches technology regulation in the United States and abroad. She emphasized that while Western technology companies mainly use facial recognition for business, Chinese technology companies are often happy to assist government agencies in monitoring the public.  

She told VOA Mandarin in an August 1 video call, “So this is something that’s both very dehumanizing but also very concerning from a human rights perspective, in part because if there are any errors in this technology that could lead to false arrests, it could lead to discrimination, but also because the ability to sort people by skin color on its own almost inevitably leads to people being discriminated against.”  

She also said that in general, especially when it comes to law enforcement and surveillance, people with darker skin have been disproportionately tracked and disproportionately surveilled, “so these Dahua cameras make it easier for people to do that by sorting people by skin color.”  
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Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

US Move Gives Hope to Stateless People Living in America

Geopolitical events such as war or the dissolution of a government, like the collapse of the Soviet Union, can leave people without a country. In the United States, more than 200,000 people are living in a stateless status. VOA’s immigration reporter Aline Barros has more. Camera: Adam Greenbaum. 

Ukrainians Move to North Dakota for Oil Field Jobs to Help Families Back Home

Maksym Bunchukov remembers hearing rockets explode in Zaporizhzhia as the war in Ukraine began. Now, about 18 months after the war broke out, Bunchukov is in North Dakota, like thousands of Ukrainians who came over a century ago. Story by The Associated Press.

Immigration around the world 

VOA in Photos: Migrants of African origin are crammed onboard a small boat as the Tunisian coast guard prepares to transfer them onto their vessel while at sea between Tunisia and Italy.

Boat Carrying Rohingya Migrants Capsizes in Bay of Bengal, Killing at Least 17

A boat carrying minority Rohingya migrants from Myanmar has capsized in the Bay of Bengal, leaving at least 17 people dead and about 30 missing, a rescue official said Thursday. The Associated Press reports.

VOA60 World — Doctors Without Borders Says 41 Migrants Are Dead and 4 Survived a Shipwreck Near Italy

Rescuers say the boat carried migrants from Tunisia’s Sfax, a hot spot in the migration crisis, but capsized and sank after a few hours near the Italian island of Lampedusa.

UK Moves Asylum-Seekers to Barge Off Southern England in Bid to Cut Costs

A small group of asylum-seekers has been moved onto a barge moored in southern England as the U.K. government tries to cut the cost of sheltering people seeking protection in the country, British news media reported Monday. The Associated Press reports.

Poland Says Belarus, Russia ‘Organizing’ New Migrant Influx

Poland’s government on Monday accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating another migration influx into the European Union via the Polish border in order to destabilize the region. Reported by Agence France-Presse.

Dozens of Migrants Saved by Italy From Shipwrecks

Dozens of migrants were dramatically rescued by Italy as they foundered in the sea or clung to a rocky reef Sunday after three boats launched by smugglers from northern Africa shipwrecked in rough waters in separate incidents over the weekend. Survivors said some 30 fellow migrants were missing from capsized vessels. Reported by The Associated Press.

Health Conditions Deteriorate as More People Flee Sudan

U.N. agencies warn that health conditions are deteriorating in Sudan and neighboring countries as growing numbers of people flee escalating fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Malawi Seeks Donations to Feed More Than 50,000 Refugees

Malawi is seeking donations to feed more than 50,000 refugees facing shortages at the country’s only refugee camp. Government officials said the camp’s food stock is expected to be depleted by December. The appeal comes after the World Food Program last month cut by half the food rations for the refugees because of funding problems. Reported by Lameck Masina.

Cameroon Government, Aid Groups Begin Emergency Food Distribution

Aid groups and the government of Cameroon say they distributed rice, millet and beans to at least 30,000 people this week along the central African state’s northern border with Chad and Nigeria. Refugee populations and host communities are among the recipients. Reported by Moki Edwin Kindzeka.

News in Brief

— The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced an update and modernization of the Cuban and Haitian family reunification parole processes. According to DHS, applicants will be able to complete most of the process online, “eliminating the burden of travel, time and paperwork and increasing access to participation. The process is still available on an invitation-only basis.”
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Several explosions were heard across Kyiv early Friday. Earlier, Mayor Vitali Klitschko had urged residents to go to air raid shelters and Ukrainian officials had issued a nationwide air raid alert.

Ukraine shot down a missile near a children’s hospital in the city Friday. Debris from the missile fell near the hospital in Kyiv, but there were no reported injuries.

Meanwhile, the airspace over two Russian airports – Vnukovo and Kalugo – was temporarily closed Friday due to drone flights. The airports have since reopened.

In its daily intelligence report Friday about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the British Defense Ministry said there is a “realistic possibility” that a “small number” of Wagner Group advisers will be present when Belarussian troops conduct an exercise in the Grodno area of northwestern Belarus, near the Polish and Lithuanian borders, according to the British Defense Ministry.

The British ministry said that Wagner advisers would likely act as trainers in the Belarus exercise. It also noted that the Belarussian Defense Ministry said the exercise in the Grodno area is “intended to incorporate lessons learnt by the Russian military in Ukraine.”

“Russia is almost certainly keen to promote Belarusian forces as posturing against NATO,” the British ministry said. However, it is unlikely that the Belarussian forces will be deployed to Grodno “with the enablers it would need to make it combat-ready.”

On Thursday, a Russian missile hit a hotel United Nations staff members often used in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, leaving one person dead and 16 wounded, Ukrainian officials said.  

“Zaporizhzhia. The city suffers daily from Russian shelling. A fire broke out in a civilian building after the occupiers hit it with a missile,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

U.N. staff reportedly stayed at the Reikartz Hotel when they worked in the city, Denise Brown, the humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, told Reuters.

“I am appalled by the news that a hotel frequently used by United Nations personnel and our colleagues from NGOs supporting people affected by the war has been hit by a Russian strike in Zaporizhzhia shortly ago,” she said in an email. “I have stayed in this hotel every single time I visited Zaporizhzhia.”

Among the 16 injured in the strike, four were children. It was the second strike on Zaporizhzhia in two days.

Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia has also become a focal point of the war because it is the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the plant lost connection to its last remaining external line and was switched to a reserve line, state-owned power generating company Energoatom said Thursday.

“Such a regime is difficult for the reactor plant, its duration is limited by the project’s design, and it can result in failure of the main equipment of the energy unit,” Energoatom said on Telegram.

A blackout at the power plant is looming, Energoatom added.

Later Thursday, Ukraine’s navy said a new temporary “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea had started working. The first ships are expected to use it within days, the navy said.

The corridor will be for commercial ships blocked at Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and for grain and agricultural products, Oleh Chalyk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy, told Reuters.

Despite the opening of the corridor, the risk posed by mines in the Black Sea, coupled with the military threat from Russia, persisted.

Russia’s decision to back out of the Black Sea grain deal was predicted to feature prominently this past weekend at Saudi Arabia-hosted peace talks about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s foreign minister said the talks were a “breakthrough” for Kyiv.

“If a country wants to be in the front seat of world politics, it has to become part of these coordination meetings,” Dmytro Kuleba said in a Thursday interview with Reuters.

“We are fully satisfied with the dynamics of this process,” he said. “I believe the meeting in Jeddah was a breakthrough because for the first time, we brought together countries representing [the] entire world, not only Europe and North America.”

In the days leading up to the talks, it was unclear whether China would participate. But officials from China, and more than 40 countries in total, ended up participating.

Some information for this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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