By Andrius Sytas<\/p>\n
VILNIUS, June 2 (Reuters) – The future presence of U.S. troops in Lithuania is “under review”, the Baltic country’s defence minister said on Tuesday, \u200cadding that although Washington had assured him new rotations would arrive, he \u200cdid not know when and at what strength.<\/p>\n
The U.S. is withdrawing thousands of troops based in Germany and \u200bPoland as the rift between the administration of President Donald Trump and its NATO allies and partners in Europe over the Iran war widens.<\/p>\n
In Lithuania, U.S. troops presently stationed in the country are now leaving as expected, but the next scheduled group is not \u200carriving, Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas \u2060said.<\/p>\n
“(The next) rotation is currently under review… because the number of (U.S. troops) in Europe is changing, this naturally leads to a review \u2060of regional stance”, Kaunas told reporters in Vilnius.<\/p>\n
The move would leave Lithuania without an armored U.S. battalion of about 1,000 troops on its soil for the first time since 2020.<\/p>\n
The \u200bminister \u200bsaid he had discussed the situation with U.S. \u200bDefense Secretary Pete Hegseth at \u200cthe Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore last week.<\/p>\n
“We have assurance that (the next rotation in Lithuania) will arrive, but when exactly, and with which capabilities, and at what size – this is due to be announced”, said Kaunas.<\/p>\n
“We were reassured that the Baltic region is of critical importance to NATO and the U.S., they see our investment, and our \u200cdefence spending is shown as an example to \u200bother allies”, he added.<\/p>\n
Lithuania, which borders Russia, has \u200btripled its defence spending since 2022, \u200band is due to spend 5.4% of its gross domestic product \u200con defence this year.<\/p>\n
The current U.S. rotation, \u200bwhich arrived in \u200bOctober 2025, consists of two battalions of Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division, with Abrams tanks, Bradley armored vehicles and Paladin tracked self-propelled howitzers, the Lithuanian defence ministry \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
The troops were the first \u200cto be based at the new permanent facilities which Lithuania built for \u200bthem at Pabrade military base, close to the Belarus border.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Andrius \u200bSytas in Vilnius; Editing by Alexdandra Hudson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Andrius Sytas VILNIUS, June 2 (Reuters) – The future presence of U.S. troops in Lithuania is “under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[93],"tags":[361,36160,9225,171,58,50679,170],"class_list":["post-98025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vilnius","tag-baltic-country","tag-defence-minister","tag-defence-spending","tag-lithuania","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-troops","tag-vilnius"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116681728774279697","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}