On Wednesday, NATO clarified comments that secretary general Mark Rutte made earlier during the day, when he suggested that four American soldiers who disappeared during the training Lithuania had died, even if the American army said that their fate was not yet confirmed.
“Research is underway”, NATO Said in a press release published on X. “We regret any confusion concerning the remarks that @secgernato presented today. It referred to emerging reports and did not confirm the fate of the missing, which is still unknown.”
The US military said Hercules’ armored vehicle in which the four American soldiers were in a training exercise had been found overwhelmed in a body of water. He said the reinstatement efforts were underway by the US military and the Lithuanian armed forces and civil agencies.
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The soldiers, all of the 1st brigade, 3rd infantry division, carried out tactical training when they disappeared.
Asked Wednesday evening by journalists if he had been informed of missing soldiers, President Donald Trump said: “No, I didn’t do it.”
During a trip to Warsaw, Rutte told journalists that he had received things from the death of the four soldiers while he gave a conference and his thoughts were with their families and with the United States.
“This is still a first news, so we don’t know the details. It’s really terrible and our thoughts are with families and relatives,” Rutte told Warsaw.
The LITUS public broadcaster LRT reported that the four American soldiers and their vehicle had been missing on Tuesday afternoon during an exercise in the training ground for the Silvestras General žukauskas in Pabradė, a city located less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) of the border with Bélarus.
The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all members of NATO and have often had cold links with Russia, a key ally of Bélarus, since declaring the independence of the Soviet Union in 1990.
Relations were reduced further on the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, and the Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda was one of Ukraine’s most frank supporters in his fight against the forces of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press