Nato countries need to improve their defence plans for the Baltic countries especially as Russia prepares to send nuclear weapons into neighbouring Belarus, according to Lithuania’s foreign minister.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, whose country will host next month’s Nato summit, told the Financial Times that while the alliance had sufficient planning in place for crises, it needed to do more against Russia’s continued threats against its neighbours on the alliance’s eastern flank.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said at the weekend that nuclear weapons would be moved to Belarus in early July, and some officials in the Baltics believe they could be paraded there during Nato’s Vilnius summit.
“The Baltic states have to be reinforced. Lithuania has to be reinforced because we have a vulnerable territory,” Landsbergis said.
Improving the defence of the three Baltic states, which were illegally annexed into the Soviet Union after the second world war, is one of the main topics of Nato’s Vilnius summit on July 11-12.
Nato has positioned multinational battalions in each of the Baltic countries and is discussing how to increase the number of troops and amount of equipment in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and other frontline countries such as Poland.
The multinational battalion in Lithuania is led by Germany and Vilnius is trying to entice more German troops by building extra barracks and infrastructure. However, Germany has until now tried to keep most of its troops based at home and earmarked for Lithuania if needed.
The defence alliance has also developed new defence plans, shared with the Baltic states, which Vilnius judged to be satisfactory for how they deal with a ratcheting-up of tensions up to a full-scale war.
But Landsbergis said that while the plans were useful in case of a crisis, they did not account for situations such as the present, when Russia was continuing to pose security threats to the Baltic nations.
“The question is what do you do in peacetime? What kind of message do you send to Putin? Unfortunately, we don’t have a message yet.”
Lithuania believes it is increasingly vulnerable in the so-called Suwalki Gap, the 100km-wide border between it and Poland that is squeezed between Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad on one side and Belarus on the other.
“The Suwalki Gap — if that is lost, it changes a lot . . . The Baltic countries can’t be left as they are,” said Landsbergis.
Lithuania’s prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė, who local officials have touted as a potential next head of Nato, has said that the path of Russian tanks to Lithuania is shorter because of military integration between Russia and Belarus.
Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kallas said last year that Nato’s previous defence plans would have let Russia invade the Baltic states before liberating them within 180 days. She added that this would have meant the “complete destruction of countries and our culture” as Tallinn and other cities would be “wiped off the map”.
At the time, Nato said it never commented on “operational details” but that “strengthening deterrence and defence” was a priority for the alliance.
Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said he was “satisfied” with the new plans but added that they needed “to be backed with real capabilities” such as more troops and pre-placed equipment.
Read the full article here
