President Gitanas Nausėda will make efforts to ensure that Germany’s brigade is deployed to Lithuania by 2026, according to his adviser.
“We must do everything possible to have this brigade in Lithuania as soon as possible,” Asta Skaisgirytė, the president’s chief foreign policy advisor, told the radio Žinių Radijas on Tuesday. “The president has set the goal for it to happen by 2026, and we believe it is quite achievable.”
Topics discussed during Monday’s visit by Germany’s Chief of Defence General Carsten Breuer included Berlin’s potential support for bolstering Lithuania’s security and specific steps to achieve this, according to Skaisgirytė.
“These include bringing the German brigade to Lithuania and beefing up our air capabilities,” the adviser said. “In both cases, Germany, through its chief of defence, showed a strong willingness and determination to implement this, especially when it comes to the brigade.”
Lithuania, for its part, will have to take care of building infrastructure for hosting German troops and their families, Skaisgirytė added.
Plans are being drawn up for a new training ground, ammunition and equipment depots, and barracks, she said, adding that all this infrastructure is to be built in the coming years.
Breuer said on Monday that the implementation of a plan for the German brigade’s deployment to Lithuania should start early next year.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July that Berlin expected to have a plan for deploying the brigade in Lithuania ready by the fourth quarter of this year.
Pistorius said earlier that a 4,000-strong German brigade would be permanently stationed in Lithuania. In this case, troops would normally come with their families, which would require additional infrastructure.
Germany has been leading NATO’s multinational battalion deployed in Lithuania since 2017.
Berlin pledges to expand this unit to the size of a brigade once Lithuania has the necessary infrastructure in place and if this is in line with other NATO plans.
The brigade’s Forward Command Element is currently stationed in Lithuania.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
