DIRMISKES, Lithuania, 26 Apr: Polish President Andrzej Duda said Friday that \u201ca potential aggressor must see our readiness\u201d as he and his Lithuanian counterpart monitored a joint military drill along their shared border.
\nDuda and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda met on the last day of the week-long Brave Griffin 24\/II military exercise along the Suwalki Gap, a strategically important stretch of land that\u2019s considered a potential flashpoint area in case of a standoff between Russia and NATO.
\nThe border, almost 100 kilometers (62 miles) long between NATO members Poland and Lithuania, is also a land corridor between Belarus, a Moscow ally, and Russia\u2019s Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.
\n\u201cThere is a potential threat, which is why these exercises are going on,\u201d Duda said.
\nThe drill included 1,500 Lithuanian infantry soldiers, nearly 200 members of Poland\u2019s 15th Mechanized Brigade, and U.S. and Portuguese military personnel.
\nUntil recently the land border was seen as vulnerable because if Russia were to ever seize the Suwalki Gap, it could leave Lithuania and the other two Baltic states, Latvia and Estonia, cut off from Poland and other NATO allies.
\nHowever that perception of the corridor has changed since Sweden joined NATO in March, as the Baltic Sea now is almost surrounded by NATO countries and any attempts to cut off the corridor would not leave Baltic countries severed. AP<\/p>\n
The Baltic Sea is Russia\u2019s maritime point of access to the city of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, which is separated from the Russian mainland.
\nThe border stretch, named after a nearby Polish town, also provides land access connections between Belarus and Kaliningrad. Russian citizens have a visa waiver arrangement for passing through the area. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DIRMISKES, Lithuania, 26 Apr: Polish President Andrzej Duda said Friday that \u201ca potential aggressor must see our readiness\u201d as he and his Lithuanian counterpart monitored a joint military drill along their shared border. Duda and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda met on the last day of the week-long Brave Griffin 24\/II military exercise along the Suwalki […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-239573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}