Poland and Lithuania Draft Joint Plan to Move Baltic Civilians Through the Suwałki Gap

Poland and Lithuania are working on a formal, bilateral plan to evacuate civilians from the Baltic states across the Polish border if a major crisis or military threat materializes, according to Euronews and the Anadolu Agency. Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania's National Crisis Management Centre, said procedures, logistics, and infrastructure capacity are being analyzed jointly with Polish officials right now. A detailed plan will follow once the two governments finalize an agreement, per reporting from UNN citing Lithuania's Delfi.

The plan would let some residents of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia move through Poland if the border regime changes under threat conditions. Vitkauskas told Delfi that in a real crisis, border controls typically tighten to support mobilization and keep key personnel in-country, which could create large evacuee backups near crossings. Warsaw and Vilnius say they're trying to solve this specific problem now, before it happens.

The exercise driving this

The work is unfolding inside Lithuania's Vyčio Skliautas 2026 exercises, which started September 25 and run until October 3 (IndexBox lists the end date as October 3, Anadolu Agency reports October 2). About 3,000 officials, officers, company and NGO representatives, plus roughly 1,000 volunteers, are participating, alongside a roughly 20-person Polish delegation, according to both Euronews and Anadolu Agency. The drills test public warning systems, assembly and registration points, transport logistics, and moving evacuees region to region. Anadolu Agency adds that six days of evacuation-specific exercises began September 26 (a Saturday) in several Lithuanian municipalities, including Vilnius and areas near the Belarusian border.

Lithuanian authorities have been explicit on one point: this is training, not a warning. Euronews and IndexBox both report officials stressing the drills don't mean an imminent threat is expected. A government running a mobilization stress test is not the same as a government bracing for an attack next week.

Why the Suwałki Gap specifically

The corridor at the center of the plan is the Suwałki Gap, a roughly 65-mile stretch of land connecting Poland and Lithuania between Russia's Kaliningrad exclave and Belarus, according to CNN. It's the only land route tying the Baltic states to the rest of NATO. Vitkauskas called it critical "both militarily and logistically," per Euronews and IndexBox, since it would carry troop and supply movements as well as civilian evacuation traffic in a serious crisis.

Poland's Podlaskie Voivodeship, on its side of the gap, is preparing to function as a transit corridor and receive evacuees, according to United24 Media, which cites Polskie Radio reporting from mid-September. Local governments across the region are drafting emergency action plans for that scenario. In September, delegations from Lithuania and Latvia also traveled to Poland for a study visit on large-scale evacuation and civil protection, IndexBox reports.

Vilnius has its own plan already

Separate from the bilateral border agreement, Vilnius has had an updated city evacuation plan in place for about a year, according to Žygimantas Solovjovas, head of the city's Civil Protection Department, speaking to Polskie Radio and reported by both Kyiv Post and United24 Media. One of three designated evacuation directions from the capital leads to Poland; the others go north and west inside Lithuania. Solovjovas was blunt that residents shouldn't expect to flee mid-shelling. Evacuation is meant to happen before a threat becomes immediate, and if an attack is already underway, the guidance is to shelter in place, not run for the border.

That plan predates the current exercises. Kyiv Post notes it also predates a September 15 incident in which a NATO fighter jet shot down a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus. Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said an explosive device was found on the drone, and President Gitanas Nausėda identified it as a Gerbera, a type used by Russia, likely intended for Ukraine but veered off course, possibly due to Ukrainian electronic warfare. Nausėda said the overall security situation hadn't changed but warned that isolated provocations, sabotage, and false-flag operations remain possible.

The wider backdrop

This planning isn't happening in isolation. CNN's Brett McGurk, a former senior national security official across four administrations, notes that Belarus recently ran large exercises near the Suwałki Gap, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned Russia could disguise drone or missile strikes on NATO territory as accidents, and the UK has told citizens to stockpile food and water. Germany is preparing hospitals for a possible Russian attack, and even neutral Switzerland adopted a new national security strategy calling for greater self-defense capability, per CNN. Separately, McGurk reports federal prosecutors charged five people allegedly tied to Russian intelligence in a plot involving attacks and murders, including inside the US.

Ten northern European nations, including Germany, Poland, and Nordic and Baltic states, agreed in March to coordinate cross-border civilian evacuation planning more broadly, Reuters reported at the time, as cited by Kyiv Post. The Poland-Lithuania work now underway is the bilateral piece of that larger framework. No timeline has been set for when the two governments will sign a finalized agreement or release the detailed evacuation blueprint Vitkauskas described.