Minister of National Defence Laurynas Kasčiūnas is conducting a visit to Stockholm, he met with Minister of Defence Pål Jonson and Minister of Civil Defence Carl-Oscar Bohlin.
Meeting the Swedish colleagues L. Kasčiūnas highlighted Lithuania’s determination to invest in national defence, grow our defence capability, take timely decisions that improve national security, and to learn from Ukraine’s lessons of this war, focus more heavily on advanced technologies, for example, unmanned aerial vehicles and UAV jamming equipment.
Minister noted the importance of Sweden, a country in the Baltic region and now the newest NATO Ally, for the Alliance’s defence architecture and its neighbors.
“Operations in the Baltic Sea are critical for our harbor defence, accessibility of navigation lines to military reinforcement and inhibition of capabilities in Kaliningrad. The Baltic Sea is a natural extension of our land operations area. We wish to see the Baltic region operational area with the Baltic Sea remain whole and indivisible,” said Minister and underscored Sweden’s exceptional knowledge and experience in the field of naval forces and coastal defence.
He also noted that Sweden’s best practices in developing coastal defence elements, such as minelaying at sea, coastal marine defence barriers, ship diverting at sea, would be very useful to Lithuania. Ministers also discussed potential joint training and exercises.
Another topic discussed at the meeting was cooperation on air defence. According to L. Kasčiūnas, the Air Forces of both countries would benefit greatly from information sharing, system integration and procedure refinement.
Minister invited Sweden to deploy fighter aircraft to the NATO Air Policing Mission conducted from Lithuania and emphasized Lithuania’s aim to ensure the Rotational NATO Air Defence Model became a routine form of activity. The Netherlands will deploy their Patriot equipment to Lithuania this July which makes an excellent first step for implementing the rotational model. L. Kasčiūnas invited Sweden to weigh such an option as well.
Ministers then addressed the potential for a more intense cooperation between the two countries in the area of defence industry, the increasing demand for ammunition and weaponry in Europe, assistance to Ukraine and security challenges in the region.
While on a visit in Sweden, Minister of National Defence L. Kasčiūnas also met with the Chair and member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Sweden of Parliament, representatives of Sweden’s defence industry and attended the Road to NATO‘s Washington Summit: The Future of Nordic-Baltic Allies event.
