La Lituania sta esaurendo lo spazio per i suoi militari

Oi, make some space, [ze Germans are coming](https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-launch-permanent-troop-deployment-lithuania-nato-eastern-flank-russia-ukraine/)!

I can lease some land. Write me an email.

**Lithuania’s military is in urgent need of a new, larger training area. With the number of troops increasing and more NATO forces arriving, the existing training grounds in Rūdninkai and Pabradė are expected to become overcrowded.** 

Varėna District in southern Lithuania, bordering Belarus, hosted a military training ground more than a century ago. It was used by the Lithuanian army from 1925 during the interwar period. In other words, it has long been considered a strategic location.

Lina Kasparaitė-Balaišė, who has conducted academic research on the area, says that debates over the training ground now echo those of the past.

“At the time, when the training area wasn’t in use, part of the land was distributed to local residents. Some people simply moved in and began living there. It was a complicated period – independence wars, the state re-establishing itself – so there were a lot of nuances,” explained Kasparaitė-Balaišė, deputy director of the Ninth Fort Museum in Lithuania’s Kaunas.

General Raimundas Vaikšnoras, the chief of the country’s armed forces, has publicly stated that Lithuania needs a training ground in the south of the country.

A site is being sought in the south for the same reason as a century ago – its strategic border location near Belarus and Poland, which is now known as the Suwałki Gap. NATO commanders see the narrow stretch of land connecting Poland with the Baltic states, and flanked on both sides by Russia’s Kaliningrad and Belarus, as a major vulnerability in any potential conflict.

The push to create a military training ground there indicates Lithuania’s defence plans, according to Associate Professor Deividas Šlekys from the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University.

Pretty sure Ukraine would be happy to lend NATO all the training grounds they need

Then send some to Poland.