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For years, Baltic states squeezed between Russia and Bellarus have been warning of the risks that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine poses to the region. The alert on May 20th for people to flee underground over a drone in Lithuanian airspace was the reminder in years that emergency planning should be fully operational. However, the incident revealed that for many residents, this was not the case. We knew the shelters. We went to one of them, but it was uh covered in cobwebs and it seemed that no one is there for sure or it wasn't unlocked for really long time and it wasn't marked. So, we then passed another one that also didn't
have any signs. And then we came to the one that I'm standing next to uh at the moment. And yeah, it's the biggest shelter it seems from the maps. Um, and we couldn't get in for like 18 minutes probably. Problems were so common place that Lithuania's prime minister, who had taken shelter with other lawmakers, offered a public apology for communication errors and vowed a review of procedures. I think that you cannot be fully prepared for all the situations and actions. But uh what we tested and what we actually how we reacted shows that uh we have a system we have a knowledge we have an infrastructure but at the same
time there's a still some gaps that we would like to fix and uh I think that there was a good exercise for the government for the institutions for the businesses and for the you know simple citizens who was like participating. The goal is also to train more of Lithuania's 2.8 million citizens for the event of an emergency and to roll out a network of modular training facilities that could serve as shelters.
