Lithuanian intelligence has found no evidence to support claims that hundreds of thousands of Russian troops are stationed in Belarus.
Earlier this week Roderich Kiesewetter, a senior German lawmaker, warned of an imminent threat to NATO’s eastern flank owing to the apparent presence of significant numbers of Russian soldiers on Belarusian soil.
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But Lithuania’s armed forces and the National Crisis Management Centre said reports of some 360,000 Russian soldiers deployed in Belarus “do not correspond to reality,” adding that Russia currently has only several thousand troops there.
They said the main Russian forces remain concentrated in Ukraine and that Moscow lacks the capability to carry out a large-scale troop deployment in Belarus in the near future.
Lithuanian officials described Kiesewetter’s claims as sensationalist disinformation.
Speaking to German broadcaster n-tv, Kiesewetter, a foreign policy expert from Germany’s CDU party, said Russia maintains two army corps in Belarus, amounting to 360,000 combat-ready troops.
“That is worrying, especially for the Baltic states,” he said.
Kiesewetter added that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had previously “tended to play things down,” but during a recent visit to Berlin warned “that something is coming to a head.”
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