Lithuania will be ready to host German brigade by 2026 - minister

Lithuania will build barracks, warehouses and step up investments so it can host a full brigade of German troops on its territory by 2026, its foreign minister said on Friday. Germany said in June it was ready to ramp up its military mission in its NATO ally, part of a push by the alliance to defend its eastern borderlands with Russia in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Lithuania will build barracks, warehouses and step up investments so it can host a full brigade of German troops on its territory by 2026, its foreign minister said on Friday.

Germany said in June

it was ready to ramp up its military mission in its NATO ally, part of a push by the alliance to defend its eastern borderlands with Russia in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. But Lithuania's president and other officials

acknowledged at the time the facilities needed hundreds of millions of euros of upgrades.

"By 2026, Lithuania will be ready to accept a full brigade with everything that it entails," Lithuania's foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said after meeting his German counterpart in Berlin. "This is a very significant step for Lithuania, a very significant investment."

Germany has led an international battalion of about 1,000 troops in Lithuania since 2017. It inaugurated a permanent command centre there in October, saying that would allow it to move a brigade - 3,000-5,000 troops - from Germany to Lithuania in 10 days if needed.

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been calling for bigger NATO deployments to defend their territories since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, in what Moscow calls a "special military operation".

But there have been concerns that any permanent deployments would be costly and highly provocative to Moscow. Up to now, NATO

has chosen to keep thousands of troops on standby in countries further west, including Germany, ready to act as rapid reinforcements.