The Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet) has renewed its cooperation agreements with the territorial defence organisations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The agreements were signed at the annual Nordic-Baltic SCANBAL meeting in Riga, Latvia.
The agreements were signed by the Chief of the Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet), Major General Gunner Arpe Nielsen, and the heads of the corresponding organisations in the three Baltic countries, according to Hjemmeværnet. The agreement is updated every two years, and the cooperation includes joint training, exercise exchanges and host nation support.
According to Hjemmeværnet, cooperation with the Baltic organisations has been ongoing since 1993. Denmark has previously contributed, among other things, leadership and instructor training, while the exchange of knowledge today also flows in the opposite direction. The Danish Home Guard has, for example, taken part in tactical drone courses run by its Baltic partners.
A press release from the Latvian National Guard (Zemessardze) states that this year's SCANBAL conference focused on regional security challenges, joint training objectives and the development of total defence. A key topic was the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine and how these can be translated into training, tactics, technology and unit capability.
"The war in Ukraine is very rapidly changing perceptions of modern warfare. It is important that we not only follow these changes, but are able to translate lessons from the battlefield into training, tactics, technology and unit capability as quickly as possible," says the Chief of the Latvian National Guard (Zemessardze), Brigadier General Aivars Krjukovs, in the press release.
This year's SCANBAL meeting was attended, from the Nordic countries, by the Chief of the Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet), Major General Gunner Arpe Nielsen; the Chief of the Norwegian Home Guard (Heimevernet), Major General Frode Ommundsen; the Chief of the Swedish Home Guard (Rikshemvärnschef), Major General Mattias Ardin; and Colonel Jussi Toivanen, Managing Director of the Finnish National Defence Training Association (MPK), a voluntary defence training organisation, and representative of the Finnish Defence Forces. From the Baltic states, the meeting was attended by the heads of the Latvian National Guard (Zemessardze), the Estonian Defence League (Kaitseliit) and the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union (KASP).