Baltic state preparing Russian border bridges for mining

Lithuania’s Defense Ministry said this will allow rapid demolition of the crossings in case of conflict

Lithuania has begun engineering work to prepare bridges on the border with Russia and Belarus to be outfitted with explosives, the NATO country's armed forces confirmed in a statement to the media on Tuesday.

The Lithuanian Defense Ministry told the LRT news outlet that the selected bridges are being fitted with “engineering structures for attaching explosive materials” in order to enable rapid demolition of the crossings in the event of a military conflict.

Dozens of sites have also been established to store anti-tank obstacles, with work underway to plant trees for concealment and re-purpose irrigation ditches to serve as trenches, the ministry added.

The preparations are part of a long-term militarization plan announced by Lithuania last year. The Baltic state has already placed concrete anti-tank obstacles, known as “dragon’s teeth”, along its border with Russia’s Kaliningrad region and has pledged to spend hundreds of millions of euros on anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. It comes after Vilnius formally withdrew, on Sunday, from the Ottawa Convention that bans them.

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Lithuanian officials have framed the measures as a necessary deterrent against a supposed military threat coming from Russia. Other European NATO countries, including Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland, have also cited concerns over a potential Russian attack as justification for mining their borders with Russia and Belarus and setting up an “explosive Iron Curtain,” The Telegraph reports.

Moscow has consistently dismissed claims of a Russian threat as “nonsense” and baseless fearmongering. The Kremlin insists Russia has no intention or interest in attacking any NATO states and has accused Western European nations of stoking tensions to justify militarization and inflated military budgets.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has also warned that the hostile policies being pursued by European NATO states raise the risk of a direct clash with Moscow.