PILKAPIAI, Lithuania — It began with a query I sent on the GlobalFact Signal chat: Did any of my journalist colleagues in Vilnius attending the annual fact-checking conference have a desire to go to Lithuania’s border with Belarus?
To a journalist, the lure was obvious: More than four years into Russia’s war in Ukraine, the border between Lithuania and Belarus represented one piece of the fault line dividing Western Europe and Russia’s sphere of influence. To the east lay Belarus, a state closely aligned with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. To the west lies Lithuania, which — along with its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Estonia — fears that Russia has it next on its target list.
At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Belarus allowed Russian troops to prepare the invasion of Ukraine on its territory; those troops sought to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, but that push fizzled and Russia retreated. Tensions remain, however. As recently as the week we were in Vilnius, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for Belarus to stop hosting signal relay stations he said were being used by Russia to attack Ukrainian civilians.
Within minutes, three other journalists replied affirmatively to my offer of a border trip: Krzysztof Jabłonowski of Poland and Max Bernhard and Sarah Thust of Germany. So I secured a driver willing to take us roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the border. His name was Zbigniew, and he didn’t speak much English. But we were fortunate we had Krzysztof, who was able to communicate our cockeyed ideas to him in Polish.
(Screenshot/Google Maps)
As we left Vilnius on the E28 road, we saw a particularly bold sentiment on one of the official state highway signs. It referred to Minsk — the Belarusian capital, 187 km away — as “(Occupied by Kremlin).” The adjoining sign, showing Kyiv 779 km away, was emblazoned with the Ukrainian flag, which is also displayed regularly everywhere else in the Baltics alongside the national flag.
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
The road quickly became bucolic; the area seemed thinly populated.
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
As we came within a few miles of the border, however, a memorial to past violence came into view. In one of the worst of the cross-border attacks after Lithuania declared independence, seven Lithuanian border guards were killed during a Russian operation on July 31, 1991, near the town of Medininkai. The memorial consisted of seven stone crosses and a preserved container that had served as a living space for the border guards.
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
From the site of the memorial, the border crossing was visible. To our surprise, given the international tensions, a long line of cars was waiting to cross into Belarus, perhaps people with family on the other side of the border. The line barely moved while we were there.
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
We noticed on Google Maps that we might be able to get a bit closer to the actual border if we took a small road that ran parallel to the main highway, near the village of Pilkapiai. Generously, Zbigniew agreed to our plan.
We drove that narrow road and eventually came to a length of yellow tape strung from side to side. Initially, we couldn’t believe that the tape was all that stood between the two opposing countries. But we quickly learned that the tape marked not the actual border but the beginning of a buffer zone.
We could see the border fence in the distance, perhaps a football field away.
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
To get a better look, we walked on a perpendicular road that took us into a field that offered a better view of the fence in the distance.
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
(Screenshot/Google Maps)
We took some photographs and dwelled on what it meant to be in a place where a global war could one day erupt. That day, it was quiet — fields swaying in the breeze, birds flying above. Tomorrow, who knows?
We told Zbigniew that we had gotten what we needed, and we could return to Vilnius. We ended up eating dinner at a restaurant that specializes in Lithuanian food, and we texted our loved ones that we had returned without causing an international incident.
We wondered how long the residents of Medininkai and Pilkapiai will be able to feel equally at ease.
(Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
