Article · Geopolitics
Lithuania's prime minister says Lithuania would pay for permanent US troops if the US decided on it. Lithuania already decided in November 2025 to cover all their upkeep
On 29 September 2026 in Brussels, Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius told Bloomberg that Lithuania would welcome permanently stationed US troops if the Americans were ready, and said he had told US envoy John Coale: "we are prepared to cover the costs, if that happened". But in November 2025 Lithuania's Defence Resources Council had already decided to cover all costs of keeping US forces in the country, and more than 240 million euros has been spent on the facilities at Pabradė. So the offer is less about money than about the word "permanent". According to Donald Trump, Poland offered more than 2 billion dollars for a permanent base in 2018, and in 2023 it got a permanent garrison with more than a dozen soldiers and about 140 civilians assigned, while most of the roughly 10,000 US troops in the country still served on rotation. There is no public US answer to Lithuania's offer.
The prime minister says Lithuania would pay for permanent US troops if the US decided on it, but it decided to cover all their upkeep back in November 2025.
Our letter of 29 September covered the Pentagon's options for withdrawing 25,000 to 40,000 US troops from Europe and the congressional floor tied to the US fiscal year that ends on 30 September. What changed since then: on the same day, Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius publicly offered that Lithuania pay for a permanent, rather than rotational, US presence. This piece looks at what that offer actually adds to what has already been committed.