Germany is “taking responsibility” on NATO’s eastern flank with its deployment in Lithuania, a top German parliamentary official said on Friday on a visit to the Baltic country.<\/p>\n
“Lithuania’s security is Germany’s security,” said Julia Kl\u00f6ckner, president of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament.<\/p>\n
“Germany is taking responsibility where European security is being defended in very concrete terms,” she added on her visit to the Lithuanian military base in Rukla.<\/p>\n
The German military, the Bundeswehr, is in the process of stationing a permanent brigade in Lithuania with up to 5,000 troops as part of the defence of NATO’s eastern flank.<\/p>\n
The 45 Armoured Brigade is a response to the growing threat from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. It formally entered service in April 2025 and is expected to be fully operational by 2027.<\/p>\n
“What works is strength and credible deterrence,” said Kl\u00f6ckner, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not only threatening to attack the Baltic states” but also Berlin.<\/p>\n
“The message to him must therefore be clear and unambiguous: anyone who tests NATO on its eastern flank will come off worse.”<\/p>\n
Lithuania borders the Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad as well as Russia\u2019s ally Belarus, whose territory is regarded as a staging area for the Russian military.<\/p>\n
With the deployment of the brigade, the Bundeswehr is entering uncharted territory. Unlike all previous overseas missions, this involves the permanent stationing of a large unit abroad.<\/p>\n
“For us Germans, this marks a shift in perspective,” said Kl\u00f6ckner. “We are no longer merely part of an alliance; we ourselves are a guarantor of security,” she added. “The credibility of our alliances is decided on the eastern flank.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany is “taking responsibility” on NATO’s eastern flank with its deployment in Lithuania, a top German parliamentary official…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3579,3577,3575,1167,5,3580,3380,478,3576,3578],"class_list":{"0":"post-3513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-armoured-brigade","9":"tag-colonel-andre-hastenrath","10":"tag-eastern-flank","11":"tag-german-parliament","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-julia-klockner","14":"tag-lithuania","15":"tag-nato","16":"tag-president-julia-kloeckner","17":"tag-president-of-the-bundestag"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}