Lithuania to send US troop proposals to Washington within days

Lithuania has largely agreed on a package of proposals to the United States concerning the long-term presence of US troops in the country and expects to send it within days, Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas told LRT.

“The details have essentially been agreed. The information will be sent to the US in the coming days. Then we will see what the response is and what questions we receive, and we will answer them,” Kaunas told the ELTA news agency on Tuesday.

Kaunas said last week that the document was ready but that officials were still coordinating technical details. The measures had to be agreed across several institutions, he said, because the package involves social issues as well as defence matters.

More than 200 US troops arrived in Lithuania in late October. A flag-raising ceremony at the Pabradė training ground on November 16 will formally mark the deployment of two rotational US battalions, Kaunas said. One battalion is heavy and the other is an engineering unit.

President Gitanas Nausėda said the return of the two battalions fulfilled the US administration’s commitments on deploying forces in Lithuania. More than 1,000 US troops and their equipment began leaving the country in early June after their rotation ended; the next group’s arrival had been delayed.

The United States began regularly rotating forces in the Baltic states and Poland after Russia invaded Ukraine. US heavy battalions have rotated in Lithuania since 2019.