Lithuania is seeking to secure NATO’s defence of the so-called Suwalki corridor connecting the Baltic states with Poland, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said before the extraordinary NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday.
Andrius Balčiūnas, LRT.lt 2022.03.24 11:13
“We want the Suwalki Gap to be defended from both sides so that we are properly prepared for a possible cut-off of the Suwalki corridor,” the president said.
“That is why we are talking about additional training grounds, additional money to be spent on infrastructure so that we can efficiently host much more troops and, most importantly, military equipment,” he added.
Suwalki Gap is a 100-kilometre-wide strip connecting Lithuania with Poland and separating Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad, where Russia has deployed Iskander missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.
In the event of a military conflict, Russia could occupy the Suwalki corridor and cut off Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia, from the rest of NATO.
According to Nausėda, what Lithuania needs most is air defence equipment, which would allow the formation of an “air defence umbrella”.
The Lithuanian president also praised the efforts of NATO countries in providing assistance to Ukraine, saying that it would be difficult to do so in bilateral formats without NATO’s global support.
NATO must send a clear signal to Russia that the war in Ukraine will “cost it a lot” and will be “a painful operation, as it calls it”, Nausėda said.
“We need to send a signal to Ukraine because Ukraine cannot wait for our discussions, it needs help today with tanks, air defence systems,” he added.
