In its declaration on Tuesday evening, NATO affirmed decisions made last year to increase the numbers of troops in the Baltic states.
In the declaration, NATO said it “reaffirmed our decisions at the Madrid Summit to put in place additional robust in-place combat-ready forces on NATO’s Eastern Flank”.
These forces would be “scaled up from the existing battlegroups to brigade-size units where and when required, underpinned by credible rapidly available reinforcements, prepositioned equipment, and enhanced command and control”.
This implies that the current NATO battalions, part of the so-called enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, would be increased to the size of a brigade.
Lithuania currently hosts over 1,000 NATO soldiers as part of the multinational battalion headed by Germany.
Last month, Berlin announced it would station a brigade, usually made up of around 4,000 troops, in Lithuania.
On Tuesday in Vilnius, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it would be done on a bilateral basis, rather than part of NATO’s plans to increase the existing battalions.
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