Several weeks ago, passengers on Minsk–Vilnius bus routes began receiving notices that their trips had been canceled. The disruption came at the peak of the holiday season and put prepaid travel plans at risk: many people travel to the Lithuanian capital in order to fly onward to other European countries.
“Because the bus to Vilnius was canceled, my paid trip to Greece is falling apart. We waited six months for the visas, the hotel booking has a non-refundable deposit, and the plane tickets will be lost,” the source said social media was quickly filled with messages like this.
Looking at the sequence of events makes clear why buses have become so critical. After the pandemic, passenger rail service between Lithuania and Belarus was never restored. Then, after the forced landing of a Ryanair plane in 2021, air traffic between the countries was halted.
Restrictions later continued to tighten. In 2024, Vilnius stopped allowing cars with Belarusian license plates to enter, except when the vehicle was driven by its owner holding a Lithuanian national visa or residence permit. That same year, the two remaining border checkpoints were closed to pedestrians and cyclists, and this year the ban was extended to motorcycles, mopeds, and electric bicycles as well.
As a result, bus routes have effectively become the last transport link without which stable travel between the two countries would be paralyzed.
A Belarusian woman named Alina, whose name was changed at her request, told Novaya Gazeta Baltia that she has lived in Lithuania for the past three years and bought a ticket from Minsk to Vilnius two weeks before her trip. Three days before departure, her mother called to say the news was reporting canceled services. Alina tried to reassure her, assuming passengers would be warned in advance if they were affected, but at that very moment she received a message saying her ticket had been voided.
She said she immediately started calling the ticket operator: one number was constantly busy, no one answered the second, and questions in the Telegram chat went unanswered. There were no tickets on sale for the following weeks. Hundreds of people found themselves in the same position and had to choose between abandoning their plans or urgently finding another way to reach Lithuania. According to passengers, some people in desperation offered 260 euros for a ticket even though the usual price is 55 euros, while the cost of seats in shared cars in social media groups and chats soared. Some even considered traveling through Kaliningrad.
Alina said that amid the complete confusion, she realized she would not reach Vilnius in time. Her family then changed course and decided to go straight to Warsaw, where they had already planned to relocate, and only afterward return to Lithuania to clear out their rented apartment and hand the keys back to the landlady.