Lieutenant General Remigijus Baltrėnas, Chief of the Defence Staff of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, gave an update on Monday evening in the vicinity of the training ground.
„Divers are continuing their work. They have been diving, looking for specific indications of places where a soldier could be. Water sonars are used to try to find and detect places.
The third thing that is being done is using a drone with scanning equipment. The drone scans the water's surface and possibly predicts where the soldier might be,“ Baltrėnas said.
He said that this work will continue throughout the night.
„In parallel, a water pump is connected from time to time. The purpose of this is to suck out the accumulated water that comes from the larger reservoir to allow the divers to continue their work,“ the army spokesman said.
„This should continue until tomorrow morning. Then, when we see if we have a result, we will see what to do next,“ Baltrėnas added.
The operation will continue to be carried out by both Lithuanian and US military and other officials.
„The successful work with the American forces and the Lithuanian Armed Forces, with all the online Lithuanian state institutions, has brought that result, but not to the end. We have to finish the whole operation, so the work continues,“ said Lt. Gen.
The Lithuanian Armed Forces representative shared why one of the four soldiers was not in the armoured vehicle.
„It is challenging to talk about it in detail, but probably the force of the water and mud with which the armoured tank dived into the water could have thrown the soldier out of the machine through pressure,“ he commented.
Divers from Lithuanian and the US armed forces are involved in the search and rescue operation. They are constantly changing because the work is so demanding. The swamp is just mud, so divers cannot see anything submerged.
Baltrėnas does not hide that the operation has become even more difficult now, as it was difficult to grasp the massive vehicle in the pitch dark, so it will be much easier to find a human body inside.
„The search started in that area, and we are expanding later. The divers have methodically divided the whole area into squares and are working with that.“
It is not clear at what depth the body of the soldier may be.
As reported, the Polish army has sent troops to the operation in Pabradė. The Chief of Defence Staff claimed that more Polish troops could join the rescue efforts if needed.
„The Polish troops, the ones who arrived two days ago, are there. The Polish troop control group is constantly involved – we are consulting with them. Depending on the results, the Polish troops may be more involved tomorrow. It is difficult to predict at the moment,“ Baltrėnas said.
The bodies of the three soldiers, found inside the armoured personnel carrier, were already delivered on Monday to the State Forensic Medical Service (VTMT) in Vilnius.
President Gitanas Nausėda, Speaker of the Seimas Saulius Skvernelis, Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas, Minister of National Defence Dovilė Šakalienė and other politicians expressed their condolences to the relatives of the victims.