Border guards at the Kabelių Border Guard Station recorded a Junion of a Red Cross crossing the border from Belarus to Lithuania at the Čepkelių Raise. There is no physical barrier at this location and the border is, among other measures, controlled by surveillance systems. The animal appears to have been chased by a bear, which also crossed the border and may have continued its pursuit inland, the State Border Guard Service (SBGS) said in a statement.

On Sunday evening, border guards at the Kabeliai checkpoint spotted a moose cub through the border surveillance system. The site is located in the Varėna district, in the territory of the Čepkelių State Nature Reserve, where the border with Belarus runs. On both sides of the border there is a headland.

It soon became clear what might have caused the animal to flee from Belarus to the interior of Lithuania. About 40 seconds later, the border guards saw a bear running from Belarus in the same direction. It had chased away the moose cub.

A concertina and a protective fence were built on the Lithuanian side of the border with Belarus to protect against the influx of migrants. In the Čepkelių Rašt' (Chepkeliai) border area, the unstable ground and natural obstacles prevented the installation of such infrastructure, so the border guards of the Cable Border Guard have been using other means to protect the border there.

One of them is a border surveillance system. It operates in the reserve a few hundred metres from the border line into Lithuania, where there is a small strip of stable ground. Anyone who manages to reach the site by foot is within the view of the CCTV cameras.

Both the moose that crossed the border and crawled to the interior of Lithuania and the bear that chased it had not returned to the border by Monday afternoon and were no longer seen by the VSAT cameras in the Čepkelių Reserve.

At the end of May, the Kabeliai border guards had also recorded a bear coming from Belarus along the road near this place. It had spent about three hours in the territory of the European Union. Afterwards, the bear, which had been captured again by the VSAT surveillance system, returned to Belarus.