At former Soviet airborne base
Ukraine Crisis in Mind, Lithuania Establishes a
Rapid Reaction Force
Photo
Maj. Linas Pakutka
leads the two main units that make up the rapid-reaction force.CreditMaciek Nabrdalik for
The New York Times
RUKLA, Lithuania —
Maj. Linas Pakutka walked back and forth behind the line of soldiers lying in
the snow-crusted field, a row of distant pines forming a jagged horizon in the
twilight sky. His command to fire was barely audible in the fierce wind.
The assault rifles,
German-made G36s, crackled to life, punching invisible holes in a row of
targets almost lost in the gloom.
“If something happens
tomorrow, we are ready,” said Maj. Ernest Gaigalas as he watched the training
exercise. “If something really bad happens, we are good to go.”
Major Pakutka leads
the two main units in Lithuania’s brand-new
rapid-reaction force. It is the first of its kind along NATO’s eastern flank,
intended to address exactly the kind of hybrid, insurgent warfare that has
characterized the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“One thing is clear
now, we have to be ready,” said Brig. Gen. Vilmantas Tamosaitis, leader of the
joint staff that commands the force from the Ministry of Defense in Vilnius,
the capital. “We have the same
neighbors that Ukraine has.”
With a population of
about three million and an active military of 8,000, Lithuania is unlikely to
put up much of a fight againstRussia, a neighbor whose
military alone is more than a million strong. But the conflict in Ukraine,
which is also a former Soviet republic, has this Baltic nation’s attention.
At the NATO summit meeting
in Wales in September, the alliance’s leaders — pushed by Lithuania, Poland and
other eastern flank nations to take a more forceful stand against Russian
aggression in Ukraine — opted to create a Very High Readiness Joint Task
Force to be made up of troops from several NATO member nations.
“The idea is to have a
capability that could react to developments on the ground in the Baltic States
or Poland, or perhaps Romania, if you had something like the Ukraine scenario
develop,” said Marcin Zaborowski, the director of the Polish Institute of International
Affairs.
The first prototype
unit in this new force, an “interim spearhead force” made up of 3,000 to 4,000
German, Dutch and Norwegian troops, will be operational by next year, NATO
officials said this month, but a permanent force will not be up and running
until at least 2016.
Lithuania, however,
decided it could not wait that long.
“The situation in the
region has changed,” General Tamosaitis said. “And we need to counter these
emerging threats, this new kind of hybrid war.”
Such conflict continues
to simmer in eastern Ukraine, with Western leaders charging — and Moscow
denying — that Russian troops are training, arming and fighting alongside local
insurgents. And Russia has been
increasingly provocative in its use of military flights and naval operations in
the Baltic Sea.
Last Friday, the
Danish aviation authorities had to warn a Swedish passenger jet leaving
Copenhagen to change course to avoid a Russian military aircraft flying with
its transponder turned off. Two days earlier, a plane flying out of Finland had
a similar episode involving a Russian jet with its transponder off. In October, the region was transfixed for more than a
week by the search for a submarine, suspected of being from Russia, which
witnesses claimed to have spotted near the Swedish coast.
In all, NATO officials
said early this month, there had been more than 400 incidents this year in
which alliance aircraft were scrambled to match the presence of Russian
military jets. That was an increase of 50 percent over 2013, they said.
“The Russians are
testing what they can get away with,” Juozas Olekas, Lithuania’s defense
minister, said in an interview. “They’re testing how we react. They are
exercising. They are demonstrating their power.”
The idea behind these
rapid-reaction forces is that speed is essential in countering hybrid warfare
threats. Russia’s repeated use of massive military exercises near border
regions, such as in Ukraine, puts its forces in a position to move into an area
quickly, establish a foothold and even retract forces before conventional
armies can react.
“Longstanding
strategic and operational indicators are not valid anymore,” General Tamosaitis
said. “We need to be able to deploy forces in hours, not weeks and months.”
Lithuania’s
rapid-reaction force — made up of 2,500 military personnel, more than
one-fourth of the country’s entire active force — went on duty Nov. 1. The
heart of it is Major Gaigalas’s mechanized battalion and Major Pakutka’s
motorized battalion, each with 700 to 800 members; they are joined by logistical
support, a special operations unit and even a small air contingent.
Lithuania is under no
illusion that its 2,500-member force could hold off anything resembling a
full-scale Russian incursion. But if Moscow mounts a small, hybrid type of
operation, General Tamosaitis said, the hope is that the force can hold the
fort until the NATO cavalry arrives.
“We would go into
action in the initial, self-defense phase,” the general said, “to buy some time
until NATO can get here.”
This is why, he said,
Lithuania is eager for NATO’s high-readiness force to hurry up and get ready —
and, perhaps, Mr. Olekas added, for some of Lithuania’s neighbors along the
alliance’s eastern flank to form national rapid-reaction forces of their own.
Lithuania is in a
unique position among the Baltic States because its border with Russia is not
in the east, toward the Russian heartland, but in the west, toward the small,
Russian-controlled enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Lithuania and
Poland. By longstanding agreement, Russian military trains are allowed, with
prior notice, to travel through Lithuania on their way to Kaliningrad, adding
yet another avenue by which Russian forces could potentially be inserted into
the country.
But Lithuania’s situation
is also different demographically. Unlike the other Baltic nations, Lithuania’s
ethnic Russian population is small. Protecting the interests of Ukraine’s large
ethnic Russian population is one of the pretexts Moscow has used to justify its
activities there.
“It is hardly possible
to see a situation where Russian units could blend into the population in
Lithuania,” General Tamosaitis said.
In the meantime,
Lithuania plays host to a steady stream of forces from other alliance members
for joint training exercises.
“In general, we are
pleased that NATO is taking this seriously and will create this new force,” Mr.
Olekas said. “Many times we have been called Russia-phobians. But after
Ukraine, after Crimea, people are starting to understand what we have been
saying.”
Lithuania’s military,
like those of other alliance members, has studied carefully the tactics used by
separatist troops in eastern Ukraine and the actions that the Ukrainian
military has taken to combat them. The first task, General Tamosaitis said, is
to figure out whether you are dealing with a domestic, criminal uprising or a
foreign incursion. He said that involves understanding the tactics and the
weapons being used.
Major Pakutka walked
through the glare of a headlight parked on the gravel road overlooking the
training field where the dark silhouettes of his men moved noiselessly, his
boots crunching in the frozen tire tracks.
Part of their
training, he said, has been exercises in which his troops pretended to be
“little green men,” as the military forces without insignia are called
colloquially. “When you need bad guys, you call them,” Major Gaigalas said,
smiling.
Does either of them
really think that there will be an incursion by Russian forces in Lithuania?
“Who knows?” Major
Gaigalas said. “We have to be ready for the worst. All I know is that if
something happens, we are ready.”
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