Lithuania has decided to restore military conscription over concerns about Russia’s aggressive regional plans. The mandatory military service will be renewed in the small Baltic state for a five-year-period, starting in September when 3,000 men between 19 and 27 will be enlisted for nine months.
“The State Defense Council, taking into account the geopolitical situation and threats to the state’s security, decided that the country’s defense capabilities need to be strengthened further,” the president’s office said in a statement, according to Reuters.
“We must temporarily renew mandatory military service,” President Dalia Grybauskaite told reporters. “The current geopolitical environment requires us to enhance and accelerate army recruitment.”
Lithuania, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, along with Latvia and Estonia, is very close to the Kaliningrad enclave, where Russia carried out a military drill with 9,000 soldiers and more than 55 naval vessels. There are already voices that say Moscow could interfere in the region through energy policy or cyber warfare and that it could provoke the Russian minorities to justify an invasion, as in the case of Crimea. Meanwhile, Russia carries out frequent snap military drills near its eastern European neighbors and experts believe this could turn into a quick assault.
Britain’s Defense Secretary, Michael Fallon, warned last week that Putin posed a “real and present danger” to the Baltic region, where he could repeat the tactics in Ukraine against countries such as Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia, members of the NATO alliance.
Lithuania also has a survival manual for its citizens in case of a Russian invasion, which says Lithuanians should resist foreign occupation with demonstrations and strikes, “or at least doing your job worse than usual”. The manual says people should organize themselves through Twitter and Facebook.
Lithuania, which spent most of the 20th century under Soviet occupation, abolished conscription in 2008, four years after joining NATO. If the Russians would go through with the invasion, NATO countries would be treaty-bound to defend their fellow treaty members in the Baltic region.