Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has called on Lithuanian and German leaders to clarify the agreement on the deployment of a German brigade in the country.
According to him, Vilnius and Berlin differ in their understanding of the brigade’s operation in Lithuania.
“Perhaps those people should go back to the agreement and repeat that Lithuania signed an agreement for a [full] brigade [deployed] in Lithuania,” Landsbergis told reporters in the Seimas on Thursday.
“All of us in Lithuania understand it this way, and we just want to formalise that fact. But this has to be done by the people who signed that agreement,” he added.
In June, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed a joint communiqué stating that “in addition to the current and reinforced enhanced Forward Presence Battle Group already in place, Germany is ready to lead a robust and combat-ready brigade in Lithuania dedicated to deter and defend against Russian aggression”.
Vilnius wants a full rotational German brigade to be permanently deployed in Lithuania. Berlin officials, however, have said numerous times that part of the brigade would be deployed in Lithuania and the rest would stay in Germany.
Germany has so far only deployed the planned brigade’s forward command element to Lithuania.
The President’s Office has called the statement by the foreign minister ‘irresponsible’.
“Today, six months after the document was signed, the foreign minister’s proposal to refine the Lithuanian president and German chancellor’s joint communiqué on the deployment of a brigade in Lithuania is irresponsible, to say the least,” it said in a comment sent to BNS.
The president also called on the foreign and national ministers “to finally focus on joint work with Germany to ensure that the allied brigade arrives in Lithuania as soon as possible and to stop raising internal politicking to the international level”.
Earlier this week, German ambassador to Lithuania Matthias Sonn called the debate about the brigade ‘corrosive’, adding that public dissatisfaction would not lead to the deployment of any additional troops to Lithuania.
Landsbergis said that he was surprised by such statements as “it is not common for ambassadors to assess a country’s internal processes”.
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