There are no indications that the United States is preparing to withdraw American troops from the Baltic states, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has said.
“There are no such indications. Yes, there are ongoing discussions on what the United States’ involvement in Europe could be, but I think that our partners are well aware that NATO’s eastern flank, its security, is perhaps the cornerstone of NATO’s security because this is where the risks related to the activities of aggressors are,” Nausėda said on Wednesday after his meeting with party leaders.
Discussions are currently underway on the model of US-EU cooperation within NATO, the Lithuanian leader said.
“I stated during the meeting today that we must preserve transatlantic cooperation as the apple of our eye in all conditions. The NATO organisation is the most important mechanism of our collective defence,” he said.
“We will do our utmost to ensure that, after The Hague summit, we will be able to say that NATO has gone stronger, not weaker,” Nausėda added.
The Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman, citing unnamed sources, wrote on Monday that “European officials believe that Trump will most likely agree to withdraw US troops from the Baltic states and possibly further west, as a result of which The EU will become vulnerable to the Russian army”.
Russia has repeatedly voiced its discontent over NATO’s presence in central and eastern Europe. Before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, Moscow demanded that NATO withdraw troops from several Eastern European countries.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth last week warned NATO allies in Europe against assuming that the American troop presence on the continent would “last forever” and urged them to spend more on defence.
US President Donald Trump has said that NATO member countries should increase their defence spending threshold from the current 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP.
Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė on Monday announced plans to visit Washington in early March. She said Lithuania is ready if the United States decides to deploy additional ground or air forces to the country.
A US rotational battalion has been stationed in Pabradė, near Vilnius, since 2019. There are currently around 800 US troops in the country.
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