Lithuania is not NATO’s “weak spot”, President Gitanas Nausėda has told the German daily Die Welt.
“We are not a weak spot; we are strong. The Suwalki Gap is a fact, but we are making enormous efforts to secure this territory, especially in cooperation with Poland,” he said in the interview published on Thursday.
The Suwalki Gap is a roughly 100-kilometre stretch along the Lithuanian-Polish border, wedged between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the west and Belarus to the east.
Last year, Lithuanian and Polish armed forces, together with NATO allies, conducted a joint exercise in the corridor, testing defence scenarios under the bilateral Orsha Plan.
The plan was drawn up by the Lithuanian and Polish chiefs of defence in 2022. Most of its contents remain classified.
“Joint drills are taking place, including, by the way, in Rūdninkai. A large part of the German brigade – around eighty percent – will be stationed and will train there, while the rest will go to Rukla in the north,” Nausėda said in the interview.
Germany has committed to deploying a brigade to Lithuania by the end of 2027. The initial command element responsible for planning the brigade’s relocation to Lithuania arrived in Vilnius in April 2024. The number of German military personnel is expected to increase to 500 by the end of this year.
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