Lithuania, Poland to hold joint exercise in Suwalki Corridor – president

VILNIUS – Lithuania and Poland will hold a joint military exercise with in the Suwalki Corridor, probably in April, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has said in an interview with the delfi.lt news website.

"I am very happy that the Polish president has really responded very vividly to that desire to have a joint exercise in this area of land called the Suwalki Corridor. We are already talking about a very specific date, it could probably take place in April," Nauseda said in the interview published on Monday.

The news of a planned joint exercise emerged on Sunday as Polish President Andrzej Duda visited Vilnius, but the exact time and place were not specified.

Duda told the delfi.lt in an interview that Poland takes the defense of the Suwalki Corridor very seriously, adding that measures have already been taken in this respect.

"Over the last year, we have been restoring Poland's defense capabilities in the eastern part of our country, that is where new units are being established, and we are restoring the capabilities of the units that have been present in Bartoszyce, Grajewo and other places all along the way, and we are strengthening Poland's military presence and also strengthening border protection," the Polish president said.

Lithuania and Poland held the last joint military exercise in Klaipeda in early July when special operations troops from both countries trained to recover captured critical infrastructure.

Duda told a press conference at the Presidential Palace on Sunday that the Suwalki Corridor is "a region that requires special attention, special monitoring of that place".

The Suwalki Corridor is a roughly 100-km-wide strip of the Lithuanian-Polish border between Russia's Kaliningrad region in the west and Belarus in the east.