(Dreamstime)
President Donald Trump said Monday that he will consider establishing a U.S. military base in Lithuania.
“They’re friends of mine; they’re great people, so we’ll certainly look at it. They are great people,” Trump told reporters Monday. “I know so many people in that country; they’re great people.”
Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius previously said his country is “ready to pay the bill” for the U.S. to establish a military base there.
Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, borders Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.
“Baltic countries are understandably interested in hosting as much European and American allied military power as possible because they are closest to the Russian bear and understand it best,” Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Center on Military and Political Power, said in a statement Monday.
“As our Baltic allies have warned for many years, the only thing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin respects is hard power, and that is why conditions-ignoring American military withdrawals from Europe are so ill-advised, especially when we see growing Russian aggression,” Bowman added.
Trump previously touted a military base in Poland as the Pentagon conducts a review of American military bases in Europe.
“Thanks to the bold leadership of my friend, Karol Nawrocki, President of Poland, major progress is being made toward establishing a U.S. Army base in Poland,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last month. “If this happens, the location will be announced very soon. This will be a historic step for our Great U.S./Polish Alliance.”
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