VILNIUS: The United States on Monday began deploying a battalion of troops and dozens of tanks to Lithuania for an unprecedented six-month rotation, a move sought by the Baltic EU and NATO state to deter neighboring Russia.
Dozens of Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles arrived by railway at the army training area in Pabrade.
Lithuania鈥檚 Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis said the deployment of some 500 US troops scheduled to stay through the winter proves that a US military presence on NATO鈥檚 eastern flank 鈥渋s no longer a taboo.鈥�
鈥淔irst and foremost, it is a message to Lithuania and neighboring NATO states that allies are together with us,鈥� the minister told AFP.
鈥淎nd it is also a message to Russia that the US is engaged, and it is an additional deterrence element,鈥� he added.
Ben Hodges, the former commander of US Army forces in Europe, said the US deployment was a 鈥渕anifestation of American commitment to continued deterrence along NATO鈥檚 eastern flank,鈥� at the time when US was pulling American troops out of Syria and abandoning its Kurdish allies.
鈥淣obody, including the Russians, should be confused by the Americans鈥� commitment to NATO despite what was I think a mistake of pulling out of Syria,鈥� Hodges told AFP via telephone.
Two years ago, NATO deployed a German-led multinational battalion of around 1,000 troops to Lithuania, an EU and NATO nation of 2,8 million people.
The alliance installed similar battalions in Poland and Baltic states Estonia and Latvia as tripwires against possible Russian adventurism in the region after Moscow鈥檚 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
The entire region had been dominated by the Soviet Union for more than 40 years after World War II.