Lithuania plans to strengthen strategically vulnerable section on border with Poland

The Lithuanian Defense Ministry has announced plans to modernize and strengthen the second route through the Suwałki Corridor, an important section of the border with Poland that is considered a potential site of aggression against the EU and NATO. Deputy Defense Minister Tomas Godliauskas said this in an interview with Politico, writes European Truth.

Illustrative photo

The Suwałki Corridor is a 100-kilometer-wide section of the border between Lithuania and Poland, bordering the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia to the west and Belarus to the east.

Concerns about the security of the corridor were voiced by Lithuania and Poland long before the full-scale invasion. For example, the countries agreed back in 2019 to strengthen the protection of this section of the border.

Lithuania currently has two main roads crossing the corridor: one of them, leading from Kaunas, Lithuania to Warsaw, is part of the Via Baltica military corridor, and the second is a regular route between the Lithuanian capital Vilnius and the Polish city of Augustów.

"These roads are critically important to us from a security and defense perspective. They have always been part of our civil-military planning as key ground routes to support allies in times of crisis," Godliauskas emphasized.

In coordination with Poland, Lithuania is currently working to expand its military infrastructure network beyond the Via Baltica, which is the main route for Allied reinforcements, by upgrading the Vilnius-Augustiv road to dual-use standards for both civilian and military needs.

The Deputy Minister of Defense added that negotiations are also underway with Poland to strengthen defensive fortifications in the Suwałki Corridor along the borders with the Kaliningrad region of Russia and Belarus.

He added that security measures go beyond physical infrastructure: “We are discussing how to counter GPS spoofing and jamming by Russia, which is already affecting our civil aviation and navigation systems.”

In the event of a hypothetical war with Russia, it would be important to quickly seize the Suwałki Corridor in order to cut off NATO allies' land route to the Baltic states.

In October 2023, the First Deputy Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council, Pavel Muraveyko, already proposed "breaking a corridor" to the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation, causing indignation from Lithuania.

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