STOCKHOLM, March 4 (Reuters) – Ten nations across northern Europe have agreed to prepare for possible cross-border evacuations of civilians in the event of a crisis or military conflict in the region, in a bid to draw lessons from the war in Ukraine, Sweden said on Wednesday.
The 10 will jointly prepare plans covering transport, border controls, travel corridors and other matters.
Germany and Poland, along with fellow NATO members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark, have ramped up their planning in recent years for a possible future armed conflict with Russia.
“Experience from Ukraine has shown that temporary movements of the population enable the continued defence of the country while protecting civilians,” Sweden’s ministry of defence said in a statement announcing the northern European agreement.
Millions of people have fled Ukraine in the four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, most of them seeking refuge in other European nations while the conflict at home continues.
Sweden said that in addition to transport and travel corridors, the planning for cross-border evacuations will include the reception and registration of people and the protection of vulnerable groups.
“The purpose of the agreement is to improve the protection of the civilian population in the event of major crises or, in the worst case, war,” it said.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said that Russia does not want to invade NATO countries.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania last year made a similar agreement between themselves, drawing up contingency plans to deal with the possibility of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing a Russian troop buildup or attack.
Finland, which shares a 1,340 kilometre-long border with Russia, in 2024 signed a similar deal with Sweden.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik and Hugh Lawson)
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