NATO on Wednesday clarified comments that its Secretary-General Mark Rutte made earlier in the day, when he suggested that four U.S. soldiers who went missing while training in Lithuania had died.
“The search is ongoing,” NATO said in a statement posted on X. "We regret any confusion about remarks @SecGenNATO delivered on this today. He was referring to emerging news reports & was not confirming the fate of the missing, which is still unknown.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said earlier on Wednesday that four US soldiers who went missing while training in Lithuania had died, adding he did not yet know any details.
A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the four soldiers were involved in a training accident.
Rutte said during a trip to Warsaw that he had received word of the deaths of the soldiers and that his thoughts were with their families and with the United States.
"This is still early news so we do not know the details. This is really terrible news and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones," Rutte told reporters in Warsaw.
A statement from US Army Europe and Africa public affairs in Wiesbaden said the soldiers were conducting scheduled tactical training at the time.
Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT reported that the US service personnel and a vehicle were reported missing on Tuesday afternoon during an exercise at the General Silvestras Žukauskas training ground in Pabradė, a town less than 10 kilometres from the border with Belarus.
The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all NATO members and have often had chilly ties with Russia since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.
Relations soured further over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Lithuania's President Gitanas Nausėda has been one of the most outspoken supporters of Kyiv in its fight against Moscow’s forces.
