The so-called Suwalki Gap has Europe pulling out maps to examine the obscure, largely undefined, stretch of land that some fear may be at the centre of a potential showdown with Russia. What is life like for those who have found themselves at the epicentre of global media and political attention?
Nerijus arrived at work to find the usually sleepy, forested border with Belarus buzzing. Amid sirens blaring on the other side, sporadic gunfire lit up the night sky on the edge of the Suwalki Gap. Armed Belarusian guards approached the border with Lithuania in groups.
To Nerijus, this looked like the start of something unthinkable during the 30 years of independence – an armed stand-off with a neighbouring state.
"The moment felt uneasy," he says months later, as we barrel down in a patrol jeep along a sandy path weaving through swamps and dense forests.
Hours later on that summer night last year, hundreds of migrants began to make their way into Poland and Lithuania, sparking a confrontation between NATO’s eastern members and the Minsk regime.
In the eyes of Baltic officials, they had come under attack – Alexander Lukashenko followed in the footsteps of Turkey’s Recep Erdogan in weaponising migration. A single incident risked transforming a confrontation into an open conflict.
But the Lithuanian guards held their ground. And nerve.
"Over all these years, we have more or less gotten to know them. With their provocations, they do something and see how you will respond," says Nerijus.
The migration crisis, which was taken under control with what critics describe as harsh pushbacks and breaches of EU law, continues to simmer to this day.
It did mark a new era for the Baltic states and Poland – one of ongoing tension, which escalated again with Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
"When I would go to work, my wife would say goodbye as if it was the last time. She would say I don't know if you will return," says Nerijus, recalling the days when Russian tanks pushed their way toward Kyiv.
"You look ahead thinking how this will all end [in Lithuania]. Everything that is happening now will not simply end, where you wake up one day and it's finished," adds Nerijus. "Every day, we take a step down the ladder. [...] It doesn't stack up in your head that this will all one day end nicely."
Another crisis appeared months into Russia’s war against Ukraine, once again bringing fears of war in the Baltics.
In June, Lithuania began applying EU sanctions on Russian transit to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania. This meant that trains entering from Belarus, making their way across Lithuania and into Kaliningrad, would over time no longer be able to carry oil, cement, wood, and other sanctioned goods.
Russia’s officials cried "blockade", pledging a "non-diplomatic" response, sparking fears of Russia quickly seizing the gap, linking its exclave of Kaliningrad with Belarus and blocking Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from the rest of Europe and their NATO allies.
Officials in Brussels and Berlin then urged de-escalation, echoing warnings from the early 2000s that an unresolved Kaliningrad question would lead Moscow and NATO toward a conflict.
Same as during Lukashenko’s migration crisis, the world’s eyes turned again to the edge of Schengen. This time – to the Suwalki Gap.
Looking for a corridor
"This is where the so-called gap probably starts," says Kęstutis, a colleague of border guard Nerijus, as we approach the Belarusian and Polish frontier.
We are driving along a wall built in the wake of the migration crisis, flanked by dense forests and a network of swamps and shallow rivers. This tri-border point marks the southern tip of the 80-kilometre Suwalki Corridor.
"How can you define this corridor?" asks Nerijus, rhetorically. "In Russia's eyes, the whole of Lithuania could be a [corridor]. Does it need one road or the whole territory?"
The talk of the gap began only when the issue exploded in international media over the past weeks, the border guards say, before it was picked up by Lithuanian politicians and institutions.
"We have created a monster. There is no need to make yourself afraid. We need to be prepared for anything, but hope for the best," says Kęstutis.
But the fear had already set in with the February 24 invasion. Much like people across Lithuania, the locals along the border, including the families of the border guards, began stockpiling essentials and food.
Their worries focus on the never-tested question in Eastern Europe – would NATO members send their men and women to fight along the border most would struggle to locate on a map? In other words – "who wants to die for some no-name village in Lithuania," as an Estonian general has recently summarised.
Although the threat and strategic significance of the corridor exists, Lithuania’s military officials play down the risk associated – solely – with the 80-kilometre stretch of land.
"If there were a conflict between NATO and Russia, the Suwalki Corridor question [...] would be seen differently," Valdemaras Rupšys, the country’s chief of defence, told LRT.lt in Vilnius.
The frontline would then include all of Kaliningrad and Belarus and the Suwalki Gap would not remain an isolated stretch of land.
Bases in Belarus and Kaliningrad itself would become a target for ballistic missiles and NATO air forces – and the Russians know it.
"Then [NATO forces], especially aircraft and rockets, would not necessarily have to fly via the Suwalki Corridor," Rupšys added.
According to Liudas Zdanavičius, researcher at Lithuania’s Military Academy, "the Russian and Belarusian forces have repeatedly used the [Suwalki Corridor] factor in offensive scenarios in military exercises".
But the use of the term Suwalki Gap has become more of a "brand" and rhetorical device when speaking to counterparts in NATO and other European countries.
This followed earlier keywords, such as Kaliningrad’s anti-air defences, the so-called "A2/AD bubble" or the Baltic states being occupied in under three days, as predicted by the RAND think tank in 2016. Thus, the Suwalki Gap has become "an actively used concept that simplifies associations with NATO's Eastern flank security".
Mounting anxiety
Near Kapčiamiestis, on the southernmost tip of the Suwalki Gap, airwaves pick up radio broadcasts from Grodno in Belarus, a mere 50 kilometres away. In its hourly news bulletins, the war in Ukraine – also waged from the Belarusian territory – fails to get a single mention.
"We don’t listen to it, the people here support Ukraine," says Odeta Barkauskienė who works at a local museum in Kapčiamiestis.
From the centre of town, locals can hear explosions at a military training area in Grodno. There, the Minsk regime and Moscow organised the Zapad war games, which included Suwalki Gap operation drills.
In the run up to Ukraine’s invasion, Russian paratroopers also dropped into the very same airfield in what Lithuanian officials at the time, although off-record, admitted was a warning to Vilnius.
"It's unpleasant when they are firing. But when you think about it, these drills have always been going on, but now we pay attention to them because there is tension," adds Barauskienė. But still, "the scaring [of people] has been exaggerated, [...] we have been living next to Belarus for a long time", she says.
Barauskienė concedes that everything changed after February 24. "It's just that we knew it [the Suwalki Corridor] was there, but we never felt the threat until February 24. It's very difficult to realise that such things can happen nowadays."
"That anxiety is there, it is natural. It's not normal if you don't react. [...] I don't think the Suwalki Corridor is any more dangerous than any other place in the European Union or in Lithuania," she adds.
At the local bakery, two women say they have seen tourist numbers dwindle at their resort.
"Many people are afraid to come here, they ask if it's quiet, if there are tanks," says Renata Leonienė, adding that such questions began during the migration crisis.
"Since February 24, we've been listening with one ear when we go to bed to see if anything has begun," says bakery owner Vaida Varnelienė. "We've lived here for thirty years, we didn't talk about any corridors before. Now, you think about where to run, where to hide. That information is missing. I heard there might be a place to hide in the school."
"Let's see how the crisis [in Lithuania] ends. Or whether it hasn't even started yet."
Fortress Lithuania
On the way to Vištytis on the other end of the Suwalki Gap, a few concrete bunkers built by the Soviets before the Nazi invasion dot the landscape.
In a defence document, drafted in late May, parties in parliament proposed building a network of "fortifications". But such plans have been met with rebukes from the military.
"I don't want to talk about what the politicians have in mind," says Rupšys, the commander of Lithuania’s armed forces. "I know one thing – both in the planning of an operation and in the drawing up of an operation plan, [...] there is always a plan of military engineering, obstacles. It is always related to manoeuvre and fire. If the obstacles are not covered by a manoeuvre unit and by fire, they are useless."
Instead, the civilian infrastructure should be built to serve dual purposes by ensuring mobility – to transfer allied troops from Poland and the rest of Europe to the Baltic states – and defence needs at the time of a crisis, he added.
But some plans addressing the vulnerability are moving ahead. Lithuania plans to reform the logistics battalion stationed in Marijampolė, the first city on the Lithuanian side of the Suwalki Gap, into an infantry unit. The logistics would move further north.
During the transitional period, Vaidotas’ Mechanised Battalion will bunker down in Marijampolė.
"I won't hide the fact that it is also connected [to the Suwalki Corridor issue]," says Rupšys. "The Suwałki Gap is getting special attention – from us, from NATO, from everyone."
Lessons from Ukraine
In the middle of the Suwalki Gap sits Kalvarija, a town of some 4,000 people. Around it, the impregnable forests and swamps give way to large swaths of farmland connecting Lithuania and Poland.
Mindaugas Lietuvninkas, a former head of the local Riflemen’s Union branch, as well as a former member of the armed forces and the National Defence Volunteer Force (KASP), put his life on hold when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Taking a week to mull over his prospects, he decided to proceed – he joined the fight in Ukraine, leaving his two daughters and three sons behind in Lithuania.
"Half of our group went to the training centre and the others were sent home. They decided that they were not suitable," he says. The name of his unit has been removed due to security reasons.
During the three months he served in Ukraine, Lietuvninkas said he took part in battles around Kyiv and in the southeast of the country.
From his group of 30, four people were killed. There were two other Lithuanians that signed up along with him.
Most of their work in southeastern Ukraine involved what he called "partisan" missions – going across the lines for reconnaissance and raids.
"We were at an observation post about two kilometres into the Russian side, which is already mapped as Russian-controlled territory," he says. "There is no frontline like there was in the first or second world wars. [...] Soldiers settle in a town, that town is then occupied, and another town is 4 or 5 km away."
"You can go into those gaps, you can cross them, there is movement between those towns because not everything is mined. You can pass everywhere. It would be exactly the same here [in Lithuania]," adds Lietuvninkas.
His former territorial unit in Lithuania was restored in 2016, just years after Lithuania began resurrecting the development of its armed forces in the wake of the Donbas war and Crimea’s annexation.
Echoing the words of Lithuania’s military commanders, he says there simply is no threat visible in the Baltics. On both sides of the Suwalki Gap, there are no troop transfers that preceded the Ukraine invasion.
The storm brewing around Ukraine in early 2022 had been enough to force some of Lietuvninkas’ friends to prepare. "Many of my friends, even families, have joined the [Lithuanian] Riflemen's Union. The Russian army movements started to unite people."
And if the war did break out here in Lithuania, lessons from Ukraine would be paramount.
Lithuania’s territorial army, the KASP volunteers, would "embark on partisan warfare", according to Lietuvninkas. There are units prepared for urban combat, while the others would disperse, similarly like in Ukraine, across the rural areas.
"Even a private, he can organise 2 or 4 people who can go with the same NLAW [anti-tank weapon] and hit that tank," says Lietuvninkas. "These are exactly the lessons from Ukraine."
"There [in Ukraine], you don't see 10 or 30 people going everywhere. There are 3 or 4 of them, they crawl out of the bushes, boom, and that's it, they're gone," he adds.
For now, Ukraine continues to hold out. For people in Lithuania, this means the unlikely scenario of war in the Baltics is also kept at bay.
"As long as the Ukrainians are doing better, it's calm here," says Stasė, a shopkeeper in Vyštytis, the Lithuanian town on the edge of the Suwalki Gap.
"When they get pushed out of somewhere, it also gets more worrying here too."
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