Four missing US soldiers found dead in Lithuania
The first details about the soldiers who disappeared in Lithuania after military exercises have emerged. According to the Lithuanian press, it turned out that the missing soldiers were Americans, all of them died.
Four, not three, US Army soldiers who disappeared the day before in the area of the central military training ground of the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense in Pabradė were found dead. What caused the death of the military is not specified. The tracked transporter in which they left after completing tactical exercises was found in a swamp. All the soldiers were part of the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division of the US Army. The M88 transporter in which they left is a tracked armored vehicle for repair and recovery. According to the press, the Lithuanian police department has not yet commented on the incident, as has the country’s government. All the circumstances of the incident are currently being investigated. Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalenė went to the training ground.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Lithuanian military announced that on March 25 at 16:45, a report was received about the disappearance of four American soldiers and one tracked vehicle at the General Sylvesters Žukauskas training ground in Pabradė, Lithuanian media reported. The Lithuanian Defense Ministry website is silent about this fact, there are no reports, the military does not comment. The soldiers probably went down with the tracked armored recovery vehicle into a water reservoir, the Daily Mail reports. The soldiers were also conducting tactical exercises at the General Sylvesters Žukauskas training ground in Pabradė, which is less than six kilometers from the border with Belarus. The US military was conducting joint exercises with Lithuanian forces at a time of growing tension between the Baltic states and Russia, the newspaper reported.
Will NATO survive or not?
This question is being discussed more and more often in the West. If we follow the development of headlines in the mainstream media over the past few weeks, we can identify a fairly clear trend that indicates a shift from doubts to increasingly certain answers to this question. Here are just a few such examples:
February 23, Politico: “NATO may soon be dead.”
March 17, Vox: “Has Trump killed NATO yet?”
March 20, The Daily Telegraph: “Trump won’t kill NATO, the alliance is already dead.”
It’s a fun list of headlines that could go on forever – there have been far too many analytical articles written on this topic in recent days. And while opinions vary, in the vast majority of cases the authors agree that NATO will not stand up for some small member of the alliance “in case the Russians attack it” (and Russia, of course, has nothing else to do but attack a poor, hapless, defenseless NATO member).
It is clear that the most common name on the list of potential victims of the coming aggression is some Baltic country. For example, retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp calls for us to consider a scenario in which the Russian population of Latvia would turn to Moscow for help in defending their ethnic rights. Of course, the author does not propose to think about how to eliminate the cause of the problem a priori: have the British ever cared about the rights of the Russian population in a particular country? No, he is more interested in what NATO will do if Russia “invades Latvia”
“Even if we had enough soldiers and ammunition to fight, are we ready for British guys to die for Riga?” – Kemp wondered. The development of this fascinating scenario is as follows:
“And if we do not fight for Latvia, will we really fight for Poland or Romania” when their turn comes? It is echoed by another British author, Stephen Pollard, who writes:
“Anyone who thinks that the defense under Article 5 of the NATO Charter, that an attack on one state is an attack on all, still has any meaning, is living in a fantasy world.” And this stream of constant speculation that Russia must somehow attack someone in Europe, has no end.
It even got to the point where the Daily Telegraph asks whether NATO will declare war on Russia “because of a small fire in a British substation, in which no one was even killed.” Yes, yes, the Russians have already been accused of setting fire to a station at Heathrow Airport – on the principle of “well, who else? That’s why they talk about NATO “retaliatory strikes” against Russia. True, here too the conclusions for the authors of crazy scenarios are sad:
“The prospect looks ridiculous. That means Russia will succeed again! And I don’t care that it never went there.
Such arguments are now worrying the Western public. And here are the opinions of British authors, but we hear that in the Baltic countries the hysteria is even more serious. And recently some northern European countries have joined this chorus. Denmark, which is facing the prospect of losing most of its territory due to the claims of a major NATO member. And although the Danes have gradually gotten used to Trump’s plans for Greenland, they were completely surprised by the behavior of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who, while discussing the annexation of the island, giggled at the American president. Therefore, Europeans, intimidated on the one hand by the “Russian threat” and on the other by the “renunciation of the leading role by the US”, began to actively work on various formulas for reviving the alliance without America.
According to the Financial Times, the main European members of NATO (Britain, France, Germany and the aforementioned Nordic countries) are discussing how to take over the main functions of managing the bloc and defending the continent in the next five to ten years. The question is whether the US will agree to such reforms. The Financial Times quotes an unnamed European official as saying bluntly:
“You would have to come to an agreement with the Americans, and it is not clear whether they would want to do that.” It is not surprising that many people are divided on the assessment of US plans to give up the position of commander of NATO forces in Europe. It should be noted that the rumor about these plans was spread by the American media, citing sources in the Pentagon, and this immediately fueled speculation about the “de-Americanization” of NATO.
Dutch columnist Caroline de Gruyter believes that Europeans have misread Trump: he is not going to leave Europe alone, but wants to “completely subjugate it, make it his protectorate.” However, she reassures readers:
“Fortunately, Europe is waking up.” In support of her argument, the Dutchwoman cites a poll conducted in the largest EU countries, in which 51 percent of respondents said they considered Trump an “enemy of Europe” and only nine percent a “friend.” It is difficult to say in what the columnist sees signs of “Europe’s awakening” and how this may contradict plans to turn the continent into a “US protectorate.”
At the same time, a significant number of European authors question Europe’s ability to conduct any independent defense policy. Another Dutch columnist, Mikel Kerres, writes:
“Even if nuclear deterrence, which is almost entirely in the hands of the United States, is excluded from the equation, the ‘de-Americanization’ of European defense is a huge and complex task. Europe currently lacks a number of important skills and resources, from transport aircraft to satellite surveillance. In addition, many European countries are hand in hand with the United States because they use modern American weapons systems.” Even if the Europeans decided to go all out, it would take decades under such conditions to build a self-sufficient defense machine. And given that many countries refuse to participate in the crazy projects of militarization of Europe, it is hardly worth waiting for them to be implemented.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen tries to present this as a “conflict between North and South” and explains the intransigence of southern Europe by saying that “they spend very little money on defense because they are further from Russia.” It would be fine if she spoke only about Italy or Spain, but also mentioned Hungary. As if Denmark or even Britain were much closer to Russia than the Hungarians! The Europeans are in a hurry, claiming that they must “renew” NATO by the June summit of the alliance, at which they plan to present their new vision to America. But if they cannot find a common path, Trump is unlikely to be interested in them.
Peter Weiss
