A defense plan for the Suwaiki Corridor was drawn up back in 2022, and Polish troops would also defend the territory in Lithuania, so there is no legal restriction on it, Kestutis Budrys, an advisor to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, says.
He also reminded that the Lithuanian and Polish armies drew up the so-called Orsha Plan, most of which is classified, in 2022.
“It provides for interoperability measures on both sides of the border, both to ensure security and to respond to certain threats. This is the work we are doing in this direction as these matters are directly linked. The other question would be if the Poles don’t defend us, how would we defend the Suwalki Corridor and we would go into those details. The Suwalki Corridor is on our defense and concrete planning agenda”, Budrys told the Ziniu Radijas news radio on Tuesday.”There are no legal constraints to make all those plans in this place.”
When it comes to Poland’s assistance to Lithuania in the event of an attack, there is a need to distinguish between the defense of the Suwalki Corridor and planning nuances, Budrys said.
“The Suwalki defense is a subject of the president’s constant work, whether he is talking to President Duda or taking initiatives to organize the movement of forces between the borders, in both directions,” the presidential advisor said.
In his words, both the joint Lithuanian-Polish exercise held before the NATO summit and the exercise taking place in recent days aim at increasing the frequency of Polish troop movements across the border, providing for joint operations and conditions where troops of both countries could operate together.
“During peacetime, we are talking about exercises, and during a crisis, we are talking about hybrid situations and how we will respond to them, or (how we will respond – BNS) to them during wartime,” Budrys said.
His comment came after Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte told the TV3’s Demesio Centre (In Focus) program last Friday that Poland’s legal restrictions “do not provide for an obligation” to send troops abroad, even in the event of war, which would also apply in the event of an attack on Lithuania.
The prime minister added later, however, that she did not mean that “the Poles will not defend us”, but that she was referring to specific legal restrictions that are now being addressed with Poland at the “political level”. Simonyte also said that she could not specify which restrictions she was referring to.
“Not all aspects of this debate are positive, especially where we question our neighbors. In Lithuania, we can feel a tendency towards questioning things as we question our German allies, we question one neighbor, then we question another neighbor, we question the US. This in itself does not create anything and does not add anything to other issues,” Budrys said.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited Lithuania on Monday and said that Lithuanian-Polish solidarity was unquestionable. He also added that the Polish and Lithuanian foreign and defense ministers would soon “decide on all the details so that there are no communication issues and uncertainties”, to avoid speculation on the issue.
NATO’s Article 5 stipulates that an armed attack on one or more of allied countries will be considered an attack on all of them. According to this article, all NATO members must agree to take action to help the attacked ally. However, any action requires the agreement of all NATO countries.
So far, this article has been activated once, in 2001, after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
Source: BNS
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