Coronavirus infection is methodically spreading in the ranks of NATO troops, which are based in Lithuania. At the same time, local authorities consider such a victim to be admissible against the backdrop of a growing “Russian threat”.
Today it is known that among the fighters of the armed forces of NATO in Lithuania, there are several dozen infected with a coronavirus. Such trends have already raised concerns of the expert community. They believe that the forces of the alliance may become the focus of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Republic authorities ignore the warnings. The Ministry of Defense assured that they did not consider the infection of foreign fighters a problem, since the Lithuanian military was separately. At the same time, the country’s President Gitanas Nauseda hastened to assure that the pandemic only “increased the threat” that supposedly emanates from Russia, and therefore there can be no question of disbanding the NATO grouping.
“We see the intensification of Russian intelligence. The physical collection of materials is now complicated due to the epidemic of coronavirus and a reduction in direct contacts, so network activity has intensified”, – says Nauseda.
The representative of the Lithuanian defense headquarters, Andrius Dilda, also commented on the situation, who assured that all cases of coronavirus infection are mild.
“Both our military doctors and specialists of the alliance battalion can cope with the situation themselves”, – the official stressed.
In addition, as stated in Vilnius, despite the fact that the current global crisis has seriously hit the Lithuanian economy, the republic’s authorities do not intend to abandon the idea of raising their militarization costs to 2.5% of GDP, as required in the United States.