The events of the last few days in Russia demonstrate the “fragility” of the regime but Ukraine’s allies should not “underestimate” its capabilities or its intentions on the battlefield, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has warned from the training camp of the Lithuanian army in Pabrade, less than 20 kilometers from the border with Belarus, the scene today of a demonstration of joint maneuvers with the armed forces of Germany within the new model of allied forces in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
“What we have seen in Russia in recent days demonstrates the fragility of the Russian regime” as well as “how difficult and dangerous it is for President Putin to rely on mercenaries” to advance his military campaign against Ukraine, Stoltenberg warned, who in a previous press appearance in Vilnius together with the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda, affirmed that the events of the last days also show that the decision to invade Ukraine was a “strategic error”.
“We should not make the mistake of underestimating the Russians. We must continue to support Ukraine, and that is what NATO and the allies are doing,” the allied secretary general advised two weeks after the Vilnius summit, where he is It is expected to approve a new regional plan of forces that will assign the defense of specific territories on the eastern flank to the different allies and will approve a new multi-year aid plan for Kyiv.
The unstable situation in which Russia is plunged after the alleged agreement between the Kremlin and Yevgueni Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, worries the Alliance and the countries bordering Russia and Belarus, such as Lithuania, given the magnitude of the nuclear arsenal Russia and the decision of the dictator Aleksander Lukashenko to authorize the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in his country. The chaos of the last few days in Moscow “also shows how difficult it is to predict exactly what will happen in the coming days and weeks,” Stoltenberg cautiously concluded after the unexpected outcome of Prigozhin’s fight against Putin and the former’s alleged decision to move to Belarus.
Upon his arrival in Vilnius this morning, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced his government’s decision to send a 4,000-strong brigade permanently to Lithuania, provided that the Baltic country’s armed forces have ready the infrastructures necessary to accommodate them. Pistorius has assured that the unexpected decision, which comes after months of pressure from the Lithuanian government, is not related to the events of recent days in neighboring Belarus.
“It’s not really a change of position” but rather the continuation of Germany’s “commitment” to Lithuania, a country to which it has assigned a 5,000-strong brigade capable of deploying in less than 10 days and where it already has troops within one of multinational battalions located near Vilnius. “Germany was the eastern flank of the Alliance until the end of the Warsaw Pact and could always rely on NATO to protect its security and its freedom,” Pistorius recalled. Now the Baltic countries are in that situation and “Germany, as the leading European economy, is prepared to assume its responsibilities.” The military exercise carried out today in Pabrade, for which the German armed forces displaced 1,000 troops and 320 vehicles in three days, shows that “we are prepared”.
The armed forces of Lithuania, a country of 2.8 million inhabitants, currently number about 20,000 troops, so the German announcement represents a numerical reinforcement of its defense capabilities of 25%. The Lithuanian government calculates that the expansion of the military camp will be ready in 2026. “I wouldn’t mind if it was ready in 2025,” Nauseda told Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anušauskas, sitting in the front row of the conference, with a laugh. press.
