Lithuania finalizes evacuation plan amid ongoing Ukraine conflict
Work on the nationwide evacuation plan will be completed at the beginning of October. Lithuania's Minister of Internal Affairs, Agne Bilotaitė, emphasized that the government's top priority is the safety of the population in the face of the war in Ukraine. "Sabotage in the region has become a new reality," she acknowledged.
Bilotaitė mentioned that each municipality has an evacuation plan ready, and the current work concerns the nationwide plan. She admitted that the steps taken are related to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which has been continuing for over two years now.
"Amid the war in Ukraine, Baltic countries have become targets of hybrid and disinformation attacks, and sabotage in the region has become the new reality," Bilotaitė noted. "We must remember that we are at the forefront, which is why today the protection of the population has become the priority of our programme," she added.
Cooperation among Baltic countries
The Lithuanian minister indicated that efforts to protect the population will be conducted jointly with other regional countries. For this purpose, Baltic countries will apply for funding from the European Union.
"The time has come to combine our capabilities and act in a coordinated manner at both the regional and EU levels. Yes, it is very costly, but we need to discuss the possibilities of combining our efforts and obtaining appropriate support from the EU," she explained.
Defensive line on the border?
Agne Bilotaitė also called for assessing potential threats at the EU level to "better understand the threats and provide measures for population protection."
The leaders of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have approached the European Union with a plan to build a defensive line along the border with Russia and Belarus to protect European countries from military threats and other "harmful activities" of the Kremlin. As Reuters noted, the emergence of defence infrastructure on the eastern border is intended, among other things, to mitigate the problem of hybrid threats, which include disinformation, cyberattacks, economic pressure, and attempts to cause a migration crisis.
Source: "Moscow Times"
