“This is a very sensitive territory, and the aggressor’s gaze can be directed here,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said from the Polish side in Shiplishki.
A 70-kilometer corridor links Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – all former Soviet republics bordering Russia – with Poland and other members of the Atlantic Alliance.
“We decided to come to this place to show that it is safe, precisely because of what you see here today: daily service, a calm but vigilant polka, Lithuanian and other NATO troops,” said Polish leader Andrzej Duda. . . . .
At the request of Poland and the Baltic states, NATO leaders decided at a summit in Madrid last week to significantly increase the number of troops in Eastern Europe.
In the Suwalki corridor, the brigades must be replenished with thousands of soldiers.
Accompanied by their defense ministers, the presidents were in the Shiplishki area, where the mobile command unit of the US-led Northeast Multinational Division is currently exercising.
From Shiplishki, the two presidents traveled to Mariampoli, Lithuania, to meet with the German rear battalion.
