The presidents of both Latvia and Lithuania have used the occasion of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Vilnius on Tuesday to call for a more robust NATO military presence in the Baltic states.

Both Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and Latvian President Egils Levits urged the military alliance to deploy more troops to the region.

“We are ready to welcome more troops by providing all necessary support and infrastructure,” Mr Nauseda said.

He added that Lithuania was hoping to reach an agreement with its allies at the summit on “switching from deterrence to forward defence, from battalion to brigade, from air policing to air defence.”

Mr Levits said he also hoped that Scholz’s visit would bring concrete proposals for strengthening the defence of NATO’s eastern flank.

“We expect that Germany too, has the overall security of NATO in mind and therefore also supports NATO’s increased presence in all three Baltic states,” Mr Levits said.

The presidents made the call given the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

A NATO summit is due in late June in Madrid to decide whether troop numbers on the alliance’s eastern flank should be further increased given the changed security situation in Europe.

Mr Scholz was due to hold talks with Mr Nauseda and the prime ministers of all three Baltic states during his visit to the Lithuanian capital.

According to the chancellor’s office, the issue of securing NATO’s eastern flank in light of the Russian war in Ukraine would be topping the agenda.

Afterwards, Mr Scholz planned to visit Bundeswehr soldiers stationed at the Lithuanian military base in Rukla, where the German army led a NATO battlegroup.

The multinational NATO unit there was reinforced with additional troops from Germany and Norway before the war, bringing number of NATO soldiers stationed there from 1,200 to 1,600.

Lithuania borders the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Russia’s ally Belarus, whose territory was used by Russian troops to launch their invasion of Ukraine.

Along with Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Norway, Lithuania is one of five NATO countries that share a land border with Russia. Finland could soon become the sixth. 

(dpa/NAN)