With Lithuania, which is short of training areas, looking for partners abroad to host its troops for exercises, Latvia’s defence minister speaks of readiness to cooperate. The Lithuanian defence minister is also interested in the possibility of training in Germany.
With increasingly more NATO allies arriving and the national armed forces expanding, Lithuania has found itself short of military training areas.
Defence Minister Dovilė Škalienė said she had discussed the possibility for Lithuanian troops to train in Germany with the country’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, who visited Vilnius on Wednesday.
“We need more training areas. One of the options is to cooperate with our neighbours and allies, therefore yesterday during the visit of Boris Pistorius we discussed a possibility for some of our units to train using German training areas,” Šakalienė told reporters on Thursday.
Latvian Defence Minister Andris Sprūds stressed at the joint news conference that a brigade-sized unit could train at the country’s new base Selonia in the Aizkraukle Region once its construction was completed at the end of this year.
“Starting from 2026, we are ready to host brigade-size exercises and then we are also ready to cooperate with our partners in the region, including Lithuania,” he said.
According to the minister, this will be the biggest military range in the Baltic countries.
The Lithuanian State Defence Council has already made a decision some time ago that Lithuania needs a brigade-sized training area, but the decision has not been implemented.
Instead, it was decided later to set up two smaller training areas in the districts of Tauragė and Šilalė, but these will only allow manoeuvring of military equipment without firing.
Lithuanian officials considered a joint training ground with Latvia back in 2022.
Since then, Latvia has been developing a training area in the southern part of the country close to the border with Lithuania.
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