Overview
- Poland and Lithuania are working on a formal bilateral framework to enable evacuations and key-role relocations if Kremlin-hosted hostilities threaten the Suwałki Gap.
- Lithuania is running nationwide readiness exercises that include about 3,000 officials, 1,000 volunteers and roughly 20 Polish officials testing border and evacuation procedures.
- The planned framework explicitly covers evacuations for Lithuania and may extend to Latvia and Estonia, and it contemplates measures to restrict movement of personnel needed for mobilisation.
- Recent intelligence warnings, including assessments that Russia could test NATO, together with incidents such as a brief Russian Mi-8 helicopter airspace incursion, have accelerated the planning and drills.
- The Suwałki Gap is a roughly 60-mile corridor linking Kaliningrad and Belarus that NATO regards as a strategic chokepoint because its seizure could cut the Baltic states off from overland reinforcement, which is driving these precautionary preparations.