U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken speaks to U.S. Embassy staff at the Vilnius Rotuse in Vilnius, Lithuania, March 7, 2022.
Olivier Dulery | Reuters
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken promised NATO member Lithuania on Monday that the US would act to repel any Russian military aggression against that country and the other Baltic states.
“The Commitment of the United States [NATO’s] Article 5 is an attack on one – an attack on all, Blinken said, this obligation is inviolable.
Blinken spoke at a press conference in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius with Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. He made similar statements in Latvia, another Baltic country that is part of NATO.
“We will defend every inch of NATO territory if it comes under attack,” Blinken said, echoing comments made by President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address last week. “No one should doubt our readiness, no one should doubt our determination.”
But Blinken said in Latvia that no decision has yet been made on whether to permanently deploy US troops in the Baltics.
Lithuania, Latvia and the third Baltic country, Estonia, along with other NATO members and other Western countries, have provided assistance to Ukraine and imposed tough sanctions on Russia as it invaded a neighboring country.
This, in turn, raised fears that Russia would target the Baltic states, which were part of the Soviet Union alongside Russia until its collapse three decades ago.
Blinken is due to visit Estonia on Tuesday.
Landsbergis said that “the US, Lithuania and other alliance partners are doing a lot, but we can’t stop.”
“We cannot allow Ukrainian cities to become another Srebrenica, Grozny or Aleppo,” he said, referring to the site of the 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Chechen city destroyed by Russian forces in late 1999. and at the beginning of 2000, as well as a city destroyed during the civil war in Syria.