Lithuania and Germany share the same views on defence, Speaker of the Lithuanian Seimas Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen said on Friday after her meeting with visiting President of the German Bundestag Barbel Bas in Vilnius.
"We seem to share the view that Lithuania's defence is also Germany's defence. We are all in the same boat and we need to do everything we can about Russia, which is becoming increasingly more aggressive, not to have a shadow of a doubt that every inch of NATO's territory is equally well defended," she told BNS on Friday.
The two parliament leaders discussed the agenda of the forthcoming NATO summit in Vilnius in July.
"On the parliament's side, we are doing what we can to make sure that our governments achieve the best possible result. Issues like Ukraine's NATO membership prospects are decided by consensus, but Germany's changing attitude and understanding of our position, is very important and essential," Čmilytė-Nielsen said. "Visits like this are bringing our positions closer together on fundamental and core security and defence issues."
On Friday, the president of the German Bundestag met with the Seimas speaker, the president and the prime minister. The German politician also visited Lithuania last week when she attended a high-level meeting of the leaders of the parliaments of NATO countries, hosted by the Lithuanian Seimas speaker.
Germany is one of Lithuania's most important security partners as it leads an international NATO battalion of up to 1,500 troops, deployed in Lithuania since 2017. In addition, a German brigade was assigned to Lithuania last year, but the two countries have disagreements on its permanent deployment.
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