“From May 7 at 10 p.m. until May 8 at 5 a.m. Actions will be practiced in the territories of Vilnius Viršuliškii and Aukštiių Paneriai and Kaunas Palemons after the introduction of curfew,” the Strategic Communication Department of the army informed BNS.
Commandant units together with the Lithuanian Police will carry out control of the territory, protection of objects, and inspection of transport.
Traffic will not be restricted for residents during the exercise, but there will be real checkpoints of the Lithuanian police and commandant units, where passing vehicles can be stopped, documents and other procedures, usual during traffic police raids, will be checked.
Thunder Bastion 2024
The curfew is part of the Thunder Bastion 2024 exercise. They will also simulate the conditions of mobilization and martial law, train the activities of Military Commands, interaction with municipal administrations, organization and execution of requisitioning.
Since part of the exercise is related to the training of the military commandant institution, soldiers and commandant units will also work in municipal buildings. However, they will train according to an exercise scenario that has nothing to do with pre-elections, the army representatives emphasized.
Defense Staff Officer: Curfew will not change residents’ lives
When a curfew is introduced in certain micro-districts of Vilnius and Kaunas on Tuesday evening, it should not affect the residents, says Major Donatas Suchockis, an officer of the Defense Staff.
However, he notes that checkpoints will be set up during the curfew, where drivers or pedestrians may be stopped by soldiers or police officers and asked to provide personal documents.
“Where there will be checkpoints with police officers, a procedure will be carried out that is very similar to normal traffic police raids, when all vehicles on the road are stopped, pedestrians may be stopped, but only for the purpose of checking documents, maybe in exceptional cases to check the contents of the car, but the direction of movement will not be changed for residents in any way and they will be able to move on as after a normal police raid, after showing their documents”, said D. Suchockis to LRT radio on Tuesday morning.
“We model the exercises in such a way that there is as little intervention as possible in public life. That is why the hours from 22:00 to 05:00 have been chosen. In principle, these are quiet hours, when there is much less movement to work in general,” he added.
