"They Said People With C Visas Won't Be Able To Cross The Border."

• 20.05.2025, 21:22

Lithuanian checkpoints are in collapse.

For about the last year, little has been heard about bus collapses at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border: on average, the languor in the cabin has been reduced to more or less usual 3-4 hours, reports "Online".

"It's like we've returned to 2019," Belarusians rejoiced. It seems that they jinxed it. Tonight from the checkpoint "Kamenny Loh" - "Miadininkai" there were reports of serious delays at passport control, nerves and disrupted vacations - because of some failure in the system on the Lithuanian side.

This is the nightmare of any tourist shared in Threads by the citizen of Minsk Julia:

"The checkpoint "Miadininkai" does not let in passports with C visas. "Happy" C visa holders collected from all buses - Minsktrans, Ecolines and Eurolines - sit in one common bus somewhere between RB and Lithuania for more than 12 hours. My plane on the route Vilnius - Heraklion has already left. That's how "Greek vacations" turned out to be. Spent: tour package - 540 euros, bus Minsk - Vilnius - Minsk - 360 rubles. Sadness and stress are incommensurable".

The girl told in detail what happened at the border last night and at night.

- We arrived at the border on May 19 at about 16 o'clock - everything according to schedule. Strange things started at once, even the driver said that something was wrong: the buses were standing at a standstill. At the same time they were all voyage buses, not tourist ones. Only closer to the night they began to move forward, but then there was information that passengers with Schengen visas of type C would not be able to cross the border.

Type C is standard for tourist Schengen, most Belarusians go to Europe with it, not among those who cross the border with national visas. But in Julia's bus there were only five such people - the girl herself was among them: she has a three-year visa issued by the Hungarian Embassy in her passport.

- At about 12 a.m., a representative of the Lithuanian border service came in and politely asked to move to another bus, so that the holders of "normal" visas of type D could pass the control and go on. In the end everyone got mixed up, people with C visas from different buses ended up on the same bus. Here we should say thank you to the different carriers for being able to coordinate and accommodate everyone. It was out of the question to just leave all the "tseshekas" at the border - everything was super in this respect.

After 3.5 hours passengers with C visas were finally taken to passport and customs control. According to Julia, everything went in a rather relaxed mode: Lithuanian border guards were in no hurry, there was no luggage inspection, and the fingerprint scanner turned red - probably, the device simply did not work.

So what happened? Julia says that no one explained the reasons for the collapse at the border, but the drivers were giving bits and pieces of information about either a malfunction in the current system of the Lithuanian Border Guard Service, or about the recent transition to a new system, which incorrectly displays data on C-type visas. And the failures, apparently, affected checkpoints throughout Lithuania, including airports.

This is what a participant of one of the tourist chat rooms wrote today at 12:35:

"Just arrived at Vilnius airport from "non-shengen". Visa C. Couldn't get their fingers scanned. They marinated us for 15 minutes, but they let us through. We are at least two people like that."

The call center of Ecolines carrier also confirmed to us that due to failures at night and in the morning buses arrived in Lithuania with a delay of several hours.

When the normal work of checkpoints will be restored is unknown. So far there is only unconfirmed information from border chats that the Lithuanian side promises to restore the system by 15:00. But if you are going to cross the border in the next few hours and, for example, are in a hurry to get to the airport, you should think about backup plans.