U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken provides remarks to U.S. Embassy personnel at the Vilnius Rotuse in Vilnius, Lithuania March 7, 2022.
Olivier Douliery|Reuters
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Monday assured fellow NATO member Lithuania the U.S. will act to push back any Russian military aggressiveness versus that nation and other Baltic countries.
“The United States dedication to [NATO’s] Article 5– an attack on one is an attack on all,” Blinken stated, “that commitment is sacrosanct.”
Blinken was speaking at a press conference in Lithuania’s capital city of Vilnius with that nation’s foreign minister, GabrieliusLandsbergis He made comparable remarks in Latvia, another Baltic nation that comes from NATO.
“We will defend every inch of NATO territory if it comes under attack,” Blinken stated, restating remarks made by President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address recently. “No one should doubt our readiness; no one should doubt our resolve.”
But Blinken stated in Latvia that there has actually been no choice yet on whether to put U.S. soldiers completely in the Baltics.
Lithuania, Latvia and the 3rd Baltic country, Estonia, with fellow NATO members and other Western nations have actually supplied help to Ukraine and roughly approved Russia because it got into the nearby nation.
That in turn has actually raised issues that Russia will target the Baltic states, which had actually belonged to the Soviet Union, together with Russia, prior to its break up 3 years earlier.
Blinken is because of go to Estonia on Tuesday.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda informed Blinken at a press occasion that the “worsening security situation in the Baltic region is of great concern to … all of us and around the globe.”
Nauseda stated that “Russia’s reckless aggression against Ukraine once again proves that it is a long-term threat to the European security, the security of the entire alliance, no matter how and when the war in Ukraine ends.”
The Lithuanian leader stated the intrusion is “a very good opportunity to rethink” how NATO reacts to and gets ready for dangers.
Foreign Minister Landsbergis stated, “The United States, Lithuania, and other partners of the alliance are doing a lot, but we cannot stop.”
“We cannot afford for Ukrainian cities to become another Srebrenica, Grozny, or Aleppo,” he stated, referring respectively to the website of the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslims in 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Chechen city ruined by Russian forces in late 1999 and early 2000, and a city ravaged throughout the Syrian civil war.
