---
title: "Poland and Lithuania rehearse how to evacuate the Baltics through one narrow gap"
description: "Week-long drills in Lithuania test warning systems, assembly points and a corridor south that war games have long fretted over"
author: "Albion Grey"
published: 2026-09-27T10:58:34Z
modified: 2026-09-27T14:10:04Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/poland-and-lithuania-rehearse-how-to-evacuate-the-baltics-th-7d2ad9
language: en
tags: ["nato", "security", "war", "infrastructure", "poland", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Poland and Lithuania rehearse how to evacuate the Baltics through one narrow gap

*Week-long drills in Lithuania test warning systems, assembly points and a corridor south that war games have long fretted over*

By Albion Grey · September 27, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/poland-and-lithuania-rehearse-how-to-evacuate-the-baltics-th-7d2ad9

## In brief

- Poland and Lithuania are drawing up a plan to evacuate civilians from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia through Poland in a major crisis
- The work is being tested in Lithuania’s Vyčio Skliautas 2026 exercise, running September 25th–October 3rd with about 4,000 participants
- The plan hinges on the Suwałki gap, the ~65km land corridor between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave
- Podlaskie Voivodeship in Poland is preparing as a transit corridor; one route runs from Vilnius to the Polish border
- Lithuanian officials stress the drills are training exercises, not a response to any imminent threat

Geography has never been kind to the Baltic states. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia sit at the end of a slender land bridge to the rest of NATO, pinched between Belarus, a close Russian ally, and Kaliningrad, Russia’s heavily armed exclave on the Baltic coast. Now their southern neighbours are planning for the day that geography might need beating. Poland and Lithuania are developing a joint plan to evacuate civilians from all three Baltic states across the Polish border if a major crisis or military threat materialises, according to euronews.

Vilmantas Vitkauskas, the head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre, said work on the proposal was already under way. Lithuanian and Polish officials are poring over procedures, logistics and the capacity of the infrastructure that a mass movement south would demand. A detailed plan will be drawn up once the two countries reach an appropriate agreement.

The mechanics are being tested live. The preparations form part of *Vyčio Skliautas 2026*, a nationwide exercise Lithuania launched on September 25th to probe its mobilisation system and the cooperation of its institutions in a crisis. The drills run until October 3rd and involve around 3,000 officials, officers and representatives of institutions, local authorities, companies and non-governmental organisations, plus some 1,000 volunteers. A delegation of about 20 people from Polish institutions has come to watch and to work.

The rehearsals have a practical bent. Crews are testing systems for warning residents, the organisation of assembly and registration points, transport arrangements, and how evacuees would be moved through one region after another on the way west and south. Poland is also taking part in the planning of the cross-border leg. Lithuania’s authorities are keen to stress what the exercise is not: a training activity, they say, not a sign that any imminent threat is expected.

## The corridor that keeps generals awake

At the heart of the plan lies the Suwałki gap, the strip of territory where Poland meets Lithuania and through which run the main land routes linking the Baltic states to their NATO allies and the rest of the European Union. In a serious crisis the region would be crucial both for moving troops and supplies north and for moving civilians south. “The Suwałki gap is of huge importance, both militarily and logistically,” Mr Vitkauskas said.

Strategists have dwelt on the stretch for years. The [corridor, about 65 kilometres wide](https://cepa.org/article/the-suwalki-corridor/), has been described by CEPA, a Washington think-tank, as NATO’s most vulnerable choke point on its eastern flank: seize it, and the Baltic states would be cut off by land. Evacuation planning is the civilian flip side of that uncomfortable arithmetic.

Poland, for its part, is getting ready to receive whoever comes. In September representatives from Lithuania and Latvia visited the country on a study trip covering mass evacuation, civil protection, and the organisation of reception and accommodation for the displaced, holding talks with the Polish services responsible for security and civil protection. Lithuania has already drawn up its own evacuation plan for a military threat or crisis, with one of the main routes running from Vilnius towards the Polish frontier. Authorities in Poland’s Podlaskie Voivodeship, which abuts that frontier, are preparing the region for duty as a transit corridor.

None of this should be read as a prediction. But it is a signal of how thoroughly the eastern flank’s assumptions have changed: civilian contingency plans that would once have seemed alarmist are now the stuff of regional road-mapping. When the drill ends on October 3rd, the paperwork will continue. In Europe’s thinnest neck, that is probably the point.