Polish-Lithuanian unity and efforts to beef up security are bad news for the aggressor, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said during his visit to the so-called Suwalki Gap with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda on Thursday.
According to Nausėda, Lithuania and Poland are increasing their national defence spending, an issue of focus at the “highest political level”.
“Perhaps this will be bad news to our enemies or those countries that look at us through the eyes of an aggressor. Today, they see our unity, our readiness to give maximum attention to our defence, and this is the bad news for them,” Nausėda said.
“The good news is for our people who care about the security of our countries,” he added.
The two leaders visited the mobile command post of the Multinational Division Northeast in Poland and then left for the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytenis General Support Logistics Battalion in Marijampolė, in southern Lithuania.
Nausėda said their visit to the Suwalki corridor, seen as the weakest link in NATO’s security, was not accidental.
“People, both on this side of the border and on the Lithuanian side, are wondering whether we have sufficiently defended every inch of land,” he said. “We all know perfectly well that this is a vulnerable place where the aggressor’s eyes can be directed first.”
Duda said the visit aimed to dispel doubts raised by local people and the international media about the security of the Suwalki Gap.
“The president of the Republic of Lithuania and I decided to come to this site and demonstrate that this place is safe,” he said, adding that the security of the region is ensured by Lithuanian, Polish, and NATO forces.
Lithuania and Poland are “doing their utmost to ensure that the defence format is strengthened” and the Madrid Summit’s decisions are implemented, according to the Polish leader.
Nausėda noted that NATO leaders had taken “many historic decisions” in Madrid to bolster the security of the alliance’s eastern flank, including plans to “increase the German presence in Lithuania to brigade level”.
“First of all, it is the principle of forward defence, which allows us to expect not only more attention but also more military and combat power here on our soil, on Polish and Lithuanian soil,” the Lithuanian president said.
“And I am very glad that NATO seized this historic opportunity to pay attention to emerging risks and to respond to them very quickly and decisively,” he added.
The Suwalki Gap is the 80-kilometre-wide stretch of land on the Lithuanian-Polish border that is wedged between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the west and Belarus on the east. In a military conflict, the seizure of the land corridor would cut off the land route for NATO allies to the Baltic countries.
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