The German government is considering deploying additional troops to Lithuania, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht has said, amid rising tensions around Russia.
In an interview with the Funke group’s media – posted online today and published in the newspapers on Monday – Ms. Lambrecht noted that Berlin already “has a great contribution to Lithuania”, where the German army has taken over NATO strike force command.
“Additional troops are available as reinforcements and we are currently in talks with Lithuania to decide when it would make sense to deploy,” he added.
The United States has ordered the deployment of about 3,000 more US troops to bolster NATO’s eastern wing, particularly in Poland and Romania. A first group arrived at a military base in southeastern Poland on Saturday.
NATO has already deployed four multinational combat units, with approximately 5,000 members, in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. They were stationed there after Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
The so-called NATO combat units, led by the United States, Germany, Canada and Britain, are theoretically tasked with thwarting any attack on countries in the region, securing time for Atlantic Alliance reinforcements to arrive on the front lines.
Two U.S. officials said on Saturday that Russia had deployed about 70 percent of the troops it said were needed to launch a military strike on Ukraine.
In an interview, Ms. Lambrecht again ruled out the possibility of Berlin supplying arms to Kiev, although the Ukrainian embassy submitted a list of specific items it wants to the Kafze’s government’s foreign and defense ministries.
The list includes missile defense systems; electronic warfare equipment; night-vision equipment; digital radio; radar stations; and military ambulances. Means of this kind are just enough for the German armed forces.
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