Lithuania, Poland Planning to Conduct Exercises in Suwalki Gap in April

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said on Monday that Lithuania and Poland plan to hold military drills in the Suwalki Gap in April.

"I am very glad that the President of Poland quickly responded to the desire to conduct general exercises on this piece of land called the Suwalki Gap. We are already discussing a specific date, perhaps it will be April. But let’s not forget that the Suwalki Gap is also an integral part of NATO’s strategic plans, and it is certainly not the case that we are the only ones here talking about the Suwalki Gap and its protection," Nauseda was quoted as saying by the Delfi news agency.

The 100-kilometer (62-mile) long Suwalki Gap is a narrow stretch of Polish and Lithuanian territory that separates Belarus from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Lithuania and other Western countries regularly speak of some kind of threat in connection with the Suwalki Gap, noting that in the event of its hypothetical closure, the Baltic republic would find itself completely isolated from its NATO partners.

Both Russia and Belarus have said they have no plans for these territories. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said the republic "has not needed this corridor for a thousand years." The governor of the Kaliningrad region, Anton Alikhanov, noted that the Suwalki Gap is of no interest to anyone and is logistically inconvenient. He also called statements about the threat to the corridor "official NATO mythology," which the United States is interested in dispersing for the sake of placing its bases in Poland and Lithuania.