On Monday, Germany sent an advance team of 20 soldiers to Lithuania, laying the groundwork for the recently discussed establishment of a permanent brigade in the NATO country.
According to Deutsche Welle reporting, the 5,000-strong strikeforce called Panzerbrigade 45 is said to become fully operational by 2027. The brigade will support the already existing so-called NATO Enhanced Forward Presence in the Baltic country, which, in contrast to Panzerbrigade 45, rotates its personnel regularly and was made up of soldiers from Germany, Belgium, Czechia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States as of December 2023.
As Statista’s Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, Lithuania is one of eight nations with such a force that’s, according to NATO itself, “defensive, proportionate, transparent and in line with the Alliance’s international commitments and obligations”.
