Lithuania warns of evacuation challenges in event of Russian attack

Civil defence officials from Lithuanian municipalities bordering Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast have warned of potential problems with evacuating residents in the event of a Russian attack.

Source: Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT

Details: Evacuation could be particularly difficult in the Dieveniškės Loop area on the border with Belarus. Pavel Goj, an emergency readiness official in Šalčininkai District Municipality, said the municipality had an approved evacuation plan and that the routes had been coordinated with the Armed Forces' military commandant's office.

Goj said the main road would likely be blocked, so alternative routes rather than main roads would be used where possible.

He added that the municipality's ability to evacuate residents would also depend on how much time was available. If everyone had to be evacuated within 24 hours, the transport currently available would not be sufficient.

Goj said that if the evacuation had to be completed within a single day, the available resources would not be enough, but he believed residents could be evacuated if the municipality had two or three days.

In his view, traffic management and transport could pose the greatest challenges during a mass evacuation.

Meanwhile, Valdas Tamulevičius, the official responsible for emergency readiness in Varėna District, which borders Belarus, said the evacuation of residents with special needs was the greatest concern.

He said those able to leave independently would do so using their own vehicles, while the municipal administration would arrange transport for everyone else.

Tamulevičius said the biggest challenge would be evacuating residents with special needs, such as bedridden patients, as they would require ambulances. He noted that there would not be enough ambulances to evacuate all such residents within the planned three-day period.

Municipalities bordering Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast have also highlighted problems involving transport and communications.

The Jurbarkas District Municipality administration said that a mass evacuation could require around a quarter of the district's population – approximately 5,000-5,700 people – to be evacuated, while the administration's existing resources would allow it to evacuate only around 5,000 citizens.

The municipal administration said the main challenges would be mobilising specialised transport for bedridden patients and keeping residents informed amid possible communications disruptions.

Pagėgiai Municipality has also identified transport capacity, maintaining communications and managing large flows of people as the main challenges. Exercises are currently being used to test arrangements for evacuating its residents to Telšiai District.

Vilkaviškis District Municipality described a somewhat different situation. Robertas Fišeris, its emergency readiness official, said the railway running through the district could also be used to evacuate residents.

Fišeris said the municipality was in a favourable position because it had a railway, which helped address the transport issue. He added that funding issues had been resolved through various projects and that the main task now was to continue training and preparing.

Background:

• As reported, Lithuania and Poland are jointly developing an international population evacuation plan that would be used if some residents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia needed to be evacuated across the border.
• This week, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said Lithuania had prepared evacuation plans in response to the growing threat from Russia. He clarified that he was referring to plans for evacuating cities, including Vilnius.
• On 25 September, Lithuania launched its largest annual national mobilisation exercise, Vyčio Skliautas 2026 (Vytis Vault 2026), aimed at testing how the country would respond to a deteriorating security situation and transition to a wartime mobilisation regime.

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