According to US and NATO assessments, a Russian attack on the Baltic states is not imminent. “But the alliance is preparing to respond immediately, should Russia get any ideas about crossing the line into NATO territory,” US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told Baltic journalists on Thursday.
“We do not see that an attack from Russia is imminent,” she reassured.
“We have your back, we have your security top of mind, and we are taking more measures each and every month here at NATO to address your very real security concerns,” the diplomat said.
The threat of war spreading beyond Ukraine is taken “very seriously”, she said.
“Since the war started, we’ve undertaken a number of steps to fortify our deterrence and defence measures, particularly in the Baltic states, but all up and down the eastern flank. What we’ve done, in essence, is we have moved more troops into the eastern flank, we have ensured that the battalions there are scalable to brigades, and we have also undertaken a series of training missions and exercises,” the diplomat said, adding that other NATO members have done the same.
The US has also moved military equipment and more troops to the Eastern flank.
American forces are deployed in Lithuania on a rotational basis and, according to the ambassador, there are no plans to turn them into permanent bases.
“I don’t, at this juncture, have any information about the US making a shift from rotational presence to a permanent presence,” said Smith, adding that it is “adequate and sufficiently provides for the commitments we’ve made to the security of our NATO allies”.
She stressed that NATO’s overriding objective at the moment is to ensure that all allies provide economic, military, and humanitarian support to Ukraine “so that we can push the Russians out of Ukraine and ensure that Putin doesn’t get any ideas about going beyond Ukraine”.
However, the White House is cautious about allowing NATO countries to send troops to Ukraine.
“We’ve worked very hard over the last two years to ensure that NATO is not party to this conflict,” said Smith.
The ambassador also condemned any public calls for the Kremlin to launch aggression against NATO, responding to Donald Trump’s statement that he would allow Russia to “do whatever it wants” with countries that do not spend enough on their defence. “encouraging the Kremlin to attack NATO territory is both irrational and dangerous,” she said.
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