Following the lead of its fellow European peers, Lithuania, a tiny nation with a population of 2.7 million—half the size of South Carolina—has ramped up both its war talk and military budget following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
AntiWar.org reported that Lithuania hopes to be able to host more NATO troops in the future. Its current infrastructure cannot accommodate an entire NATO brigade, which is up to 5,000 soldiers. The country hopes to correct the issue by 2027.
“We are talking about hundreds of millions of euros for that purpose,” Gitanas Nauseda, the Lithuanian president, said. “And this is also a serious amount of money which allows me to talk about the necessity of achieving 3 percent of defense spending in the coming years.”
Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe that shares a border with Russia. There have been tensions between Moscow and Vilnius over Lithuania’s move to ban transit of goods between Russia and Kaliningrad, according to CBS News.
Kaliningrad, Russia’s only access to the Baltic Sea, is the capital of the Russian province of the same name that is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania along the Baltic coast. Russia relies on freight routes through Lithuania and Belarus for shipments like coal and construction materials from the port.
“Russia will certainly respond to such hostile actions,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary-general of Russia’s Security Council, said, according to the report. “The consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania.”
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and close Putin ally, said the Lithuanian blockade is “akin to a declaration of war.” Lithuania said it is merely upholding sanctions that have been put in place by the EU. Lithuania has a meager military, but is protected under NATO’s Article 5.
The West has made clear that any attack on a NATO member would mobilize the entire Alliance.
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