On Wednesday Oct. 9, Lithuania’s Defense Minister, Laurynas Kasčiūnas, posted on X / Twitter a report on the completion of new fortifications on a strategic bridge over the Neman River, near the border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.
The territory is positioned between the Baltic Sea, Poland and Lithuania, both NATO members. It is heavily armed, housing the headquarters of Moscow’s Baltic Sea Fleet and is believed to hold Russian tactical nuclear weapons.
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The Baltic nation has been reinforcing bridges with anti-tank obstacles, digging trenches, barriers, and minefields on its borders with Russia and Belarus along with similar defensive preparations being made by Latvia and Estonia since July.
Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur, the construction of these defenses is because of the lessons learned since the February 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He said that the value of well-prepared physical barriers to enemy movement supported by military forces able to provide covering fire had been consistently proven.
The Latvian Minister of Defense, Andris Spruds endorsed the importance of strengthening defenses on NATO's eastern flank. He said this collective initiative resulted from resolutions at NATO’s 2022 Madrid Summit which laid down a commitment to reinforce the defenses on the alliance’s Russian-facing borders.
The result is a network of pre-positioned fortifications, anti-tank barriers, and enhanced defensive structures along likely directions of advance from the east intended to deter the sort of rapid advance by Moscow’s forces that Ukraine initially faced. The physical barriers are supported by land, sea, air, and cyber military forces on higher levels of readiness than before the 2022 invasion. The aim is to act as both a tripwire against Russian aggression and to give the rest of NATO time to ratchet up its collective response.
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The events of the last two and a half years in Ukraine have thrust the Baltic states into the forefront of European security and their responses have shown their preparedness to take on the role.
Their efforts have been mirrored by Poland’s which has started preparations of a 700-kilometer (440-mile) long network of fortifications that it has dubbed the “Eastern Shield” – work on which began in May. The scheme for which materials alone is likely to cost Warsaw around $2.5 billion, partly funded by the EU, and is a reflection of Poland’s increase in defense spending since 2022, which now represents more than 4% of its GDP.
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