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Photos from inside the Suwalki Gap
By Timothy Fadek[Roads and Kingdoms] In the Suwalki Gap, the 64-mile border between Poland and Lithuania, tensions are high. This is the only border the Baltic states share with the rest of NATO. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, some fear that the three countries could be next. Taking the Suwalki Gap would cut them off from their European NATO allies. The United States is sending an increasing number of soldiers to supplement their NATO allies in Central and Eastern Europe in response to potential Russian military expansion. The region’s historic ethnic tensions could also be exploited, as demonstrated in Donbass, South Ossetia, Abkhazia in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova. The militarized environment created by the deployment of Russian land troops and the Russian Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad is a strong deterrent to any attempt NATO might undertake to kick out Russia from the Baltic states and the Suwalki Gap, should the Russians invade the region. I spent two weeks in the Suwalki Gap to get an early look at NATO’s response to the Russian deployment, which some analysts believe is there to stay. Posted by: ryuge 2017-09-17 |
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