Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said he still “hopes for a miracle” as rescue crews continue work to recover a submerged military vehicle that was carrying four US soldiers who remain missing.
Nauseda told reporters after he arrived on March 28 to survey the situation at the Pabrade military training ground near Lithuania's border with Belarus that while many sceptics "would probably say there is nothing to hope for in these circumstances, I want to believe."
"I am still hoping for a miracle," he added.
Rescue operations have been under way since the early hours of March 25, when four US soldiers in an M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle went missing.
Their vehicle was found submerged in a bog out in the training ground, triggering a massive recovery effort involving hundreds of Lithuanian and US personnel and dozens of vehicles.
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U.S. Navy, Army Teams Join Search For American Soldiers Missing In Lithuania
Lithuanian Defense Minister Davile Sakaliene said the rescue operation was able to remove "two to three meters of silt," but the vehicle was still not visible due to murky water.
"It's still not enough, and water is rushing into the incident site from a nearby lake," she told LRT radio earlier in the day. She previously said the vehicle was located in water and mud at “more than 5 meters down.”
Sakaliene said that the fate of the four soldiers has yet to be determined and that investigators have not ruled out the possibility that they are not in the vehicle, but elsewhere.
On March 27, US Ambassador to Lithuania Kara C. McDonald visited the site of the search operation, pledging that US authorities "will not rest until we find them."
Following the McDonald’s visit and the arrival of a team of US divers to the training ground, Sakalene said Lithuanians are “heartbroken” and “watching every moment of this rescue operation.”
“Just as America doesn’t leave its own behind, we in Lithuania don’t leave ours behind either. And we consider these American soldiers our own,” she told Fox News on March 28.
Lithuania, a NATO and EU member, hosts more than 1,000 US troops stationed in the Baltic nation on a rotational basis.
US Army Europe and Africa said in a statement earlier that the four soldiers were "conducting scheduled tactical training" when they went missing on March 25.
In the early hours of the rescue operation, several conflicting accounts emerged, including comments from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that the four US soldiers were dead.
A NATO spokeswoman later walked back those comments.
Asked on the evening of March 26 by reporters if he had been briefed about the missing soldiers, US President Donald Trump said, “No, I haven’t.”
He has not commented on the situation since.