In June this year, German Defense Minister Pistorius mentioned during a visit to Lithuania that he wanted to station a brigade of more than 4,000 people in Lithuania. On November 7, the German Ministry of Defense issued a statement officially confirming the dispatch of two battalions to Lithuania, the 122nd Armored Infantry Battalion and the 203rd Armored Battalion.
German Defense Minister visits Lithuania).
For Lithuania, this is a good thing, the small country has the protection of a large country, which can greatly boost the "anti-Russian fighting spirit" and jump higher in the future, but with the gradual implementation of the plan, the contradictions between the two sides on funding are also on the verge of breaking out. Recently, Lithuania's ** Nauseda received Pistorius, who was visiting again, and the two sides discussed the relevant expenses of the German garrison, and quarreled on the spot.
According to the German plan, this force has about 5,000 combatants and civilians, and in order to stabilize the morale of the army, the two sides agreed to allow soldiers to bring their families, and the final number of troops stationed in Lithuania may be tens of thousands. This number may not sound like much to us. But in Lithuania, it's like an extra town out of thin air. These people will have to eat, drink, and Lazar, the soldiers will have to have military bases, and their families will have to pay for hospitals, schools, supermarkets, and other supporting facilities, and the cost will be astronomical.
German Defense Minister Pistorius)
Moreover, this is a permanent deployment of the garrison program, which means that many projects will have to be paid for a long time. According to German estimates, the amount of supplies for the garrison alone is more than 5 billion euros, which is likely to increase several times if other projects and the duration of the garrison are taken into account.
Who's going to give this money?It stands to reason that Lithuania should pay the "protection fee", but Lithuania is also poor, otherwise it would not jump up and down all day long, relying on "anti-China" and "anti-Russia" to earn some hard-earned money. Nauseda said that Lithuania hopes to bear only the cost of military infrastructure, and Germany will also have to bear part of the rest, such as accommodation expenses, and the German army has a high standard in this regard, and Lithuania cannot afford it. In addition, in terms of family resettlement, Lithuania wants to give a piece of land, and you Germany can build whatever you want, don't expect us to pay for it.
Lithuania ** Nauseda).
Now that things are stuck here, no one is willing to concede, and this disagreement is likely to bankrupt the German garrison plan. Lithuania can't afford it, and Germany is strapped for money. In the two years of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Germany has undergone "deindustrialization", and Merkel's legacy is about to be lost by Scholz. And now, the population is very sensitive to the issue of spending money, and if Germany agrees to take the lead, the people will never give up.
In fact, as early as the beginning of the garrison plan, the chairman of the German Defense Association Vestner mentioned the lack of materials, but at that time European countries were still "anti-Russian sentiment", and it was far from the time to spend money, so it was not focused on discussion, and now the two sides have invested several months to do preliminary work, and when it is time to pay for it, everyone found outOh, so you don't want to pay either?
Negotiations on the garrison reached an impasse).
Regarding the differences between the two sides, Nauseda said that it will not affect the stationing of German troops before 2026, and Lithuania will try its best to share the basic costs, but will also negotiate on the issue of apportionmentOf course, the consultations do not mean that Lithuania wants to pay for it. It's just a matter of putting words here to show that Lithuania is not picky.
After all, Lithuania is a NATO country, if a war breaks out between Russia and Lithuania, Germany will definitely be involved in the fifth clause of NATO, and the purpose of Lithuania to station German troops is just to pick up an army for nothing to cheer for its arrogant platform, and it has not considered the strategic vision of the Germans to "deter Russia" in advance in order to prevent the Russian army from advancing westward.
It is also from this incident that we will find that the whole process is very much in line with the standard model of various Western plansfirst recklessly talked about it, and then faced with thorny problems, it was possible to delay it for a day, and after the delay, he had to find face for himself, and finally he couldn't drag it out and admitted defeat. The EU's commitment to provide Ukraine with 1 million artillery shells is like this, and so is the launch of more than 10,000 sanctions against Russia.