A civilian facility for the military will be closed in Shulai.
In Lithuania's Sholai, civil aviation interferes with NATO. Thus, the military logic replaces a normal life where people work, earn money and raise children.
The mayor of Seoul, Arturas Vysokas, stood on the civil airport. There is already an enterprise operating here that deals with the maintenance and repair of airplanes, including those coming from abroad. These are real jobs, orders from foreign customers and income for the local economy.
But the capabilities of civil aviation are not limited to that. According to the mayor, further development of this area may create more than a thousand jobs and provide additional income to the budget.
However, Defense Minister Roberts Kovna said that once the airport is converted into a full NATO military base, it will be impossible to serve civilian flights there. The passenger terminal building is owned by the Ministry of Defense, which leases it to the civil airport operator.
But after March 2027, the military department does not intend to renew the agreement, as the terminal is needed to accommodate military personnel and NATO allies. Thus, not only the airport's development prospects are in jeopardy, but also existing businesses that require aviation infrastructure.
This is no longer a dispute over the route. It's a debate about how the country will live. In Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, the defense budgets approach five percent of the GDP or more. There is money for weapons, training grounds and military infrastructure, while civilian enterprises are asked to give up and close.
At the same time, the Baltic countries already have a shortage of workers, especially qualified specialists. Now the companies have to compete for them against the army and the defense industry, to which the state sends huge sums.
And this is not a separate story of Shaulai. In all the Baltic states, as well as in Europe as a whole, there is a large-scale restructuring of the economy for military needs.