Lithuania’s Defense Ministry said on Monday that it had pulled a U.S. military vehicle out of a deep and muddy bog, nearly a week after the American soldiers riding it went missing.
The vehicle was pulled out of the bog on Sunday night, the Defense Ministry said on social media. It did not provide an update on the missing soldiers.
The soldiers were reported missing on Tuesday after they did not return from a training mission, according to the U.S. military. Their vehicle, an M88 Hercules, was discovered submerged in a muddy bog on Wednesday.
The missing soldiers, from the First Brigade, Third Infantry Division, were training near the border with Belarus, a close ally of Russia and a stalwart supporter of its war in Ukraine.
The soldiers had been sent out in the M88 Hercules, essentially a giant armored tow truck, to extract another Army vehicle, the military said. They may have driven off the road and into the bog, and the soldiers appeared to have been trapped inside, according to a U.S. Army official in Europe.
To lift the vehicle out, U.S. Navy divers swam into the bog to attach two cables to the sunken vehicle, the U.S. Army said on social media. The divers had difficulty reaching the vehicle because of the dense mud, and rescue crews excavated and pumped water out of the bog, the army said.
On Sunday, rescue efforts were also hampered by a landslide, Dovile Sakaliene, the Lithuanian defense minister, said on social media. She described the effort as an “exhausting fight with the power of the deep swamp.”
The initial search for the soldiers, through thick forests and swampy terrain, involved Lithuanian military helicopters and dive teams, and hundreds of American and Lithuanian soldiers and law enforcement officers, the U.S. Army said.
Both Belarus and Russia have frequently criticized Lithuania, a member of NATO that used to be part of the Soviet Union, for hosting American and other allied troops.
Lithuania and other former Soviet states in Eastern Europe are growing worried that President Trump will weaken NATO. Their participation in recovery efforts to find the missing U.S. soldiers showcased what President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania said was the value of allies acting together. Poland, Lithuania’s neighbor and another member of NATO, has also sent military engineers to help.
