Riga, 9.Feb., BARGAIN. Latvia currently does not plan to increase the readiness of the armed forces in connection with the upcoming military exercises in Belarus, the commander of the National Armed Forces (NAF) Leonids Kalniņš admitted to Leta.
Lithuania has increased the readiness of its armed forces in connection with the upcoming military exercises in Belarus, which will also be attended by Russian soldiers, army commander Valdemars Rupšis confirmed in an interview with news agency BNS on Monday.
Latvia does not intend to take such a step, the NAF commander told Leta agency and reminded that the Latvian army has already taken appropriate measures to strengthen security at the end of last year, for example, by conducting extensive training in Latgale and carrying out the notification of soldiers. Soldiers have also been staying on the Latvian-Belarusian border since the summer of last year, helping border guards to counter the pressure of illegal immigration caused by Belarus.
Also on Tuesday, the announcement by the Belarusian border guard committee that an-2 aircraft belonging to Latvia had flown into the Belarusian airspace is not a reason to issue an alert to the armed forces, since such information provided by the Belarusian side is false.
Despite this, the NAF is actively following the situation, moreover, large Belarusian training activities have not been observed in the vicinity of Latvia. “In fact, these exercises are already under way from the end of last year, but now simply these exercises have escalated with a much larger number of military personnel,” the commander added.
Today Riga hosted the Annual Meeting of the commanders of the Baltic and Nordic armed forces, which will discuss the current issues of regional and international security, as well as the future multilateral cooperation between the Nordic and Baltic countries in the field of Defence.
The NAF commander said that in such a format of the meeting, the signing of any agreement is not foreseen, but the commanders of the National Armed Forces have a unified vision of Russia’s approximate goals in the near future. These goals are the restoration of the post-Soviet space and the strengthening of influence.
“This further strengthens our position that the development of our military capabilities must be accelerated. In any case, in such meetings, we manage to find common ground in various fields and cooperation between the military forces,” Kalnins said.
It has already been reported that Lithuania has increased the readiness of its armed forces in connection with the upcoming military exercises in Belarus, in which Russian soldiers will also participate, Rupšis confirmed in an interview with news agency BNS on Monday.
Recently, Western countries are worried not only by the tightening of Russian forces at the border with Ukraine, but also by their arrival in Belarus, where out of 10. up to 20.joint military exercises of the two countries are scheduled for February. According to NATO, approximately 30,000 Russian troops will be deployed in Belarus in total.
According to him, the Lithuanian forces are concentrated in certain places and their response time is increased so that it is possible to respond to possible threats.
It was also reported that the Belarusian border guard Committee announced on Tuesday that an-2 aircraft belonging to Latvia had flown into Belarusian airspace.
Considering that the NAF continues to provide support to the state border guard in order to deter illegal immigrants from entering Latvia together with border guards, the planned flight of “An-2” near the border on Tuesday has actually taken place, the NAF said on Tuesday.
The information obtained from the means of objective control – the GPS signal data of the aircraft – indicates that there was no violation of the state border.
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