Lithuania’s president calls for more NATO troops

VILNIUS, April 22 (Reuters) – NATO should increase its deployment of troops in Lithuania and elsewhere on Europe’s eastern flank following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania’s president told Germany’s foreign minister during a meeting in Vilnius on Friday.

NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence Battalion should be transformed into “at least” the size of a brigade, while air defences should be improved, President Gitanas Nauseda said in a statement.

He also called for a reinforcement of the Baltics’ only overland connection to the rest of the European Union, a narrow strip of land between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave known as the Suwalki corridor.

Reporting by Alexander Ratz and Andrius Sytas, editing by Terje Solsvik