The tiny Baltic nation of Lithuania announced plans Monday to fence off its border with Russia amid rising tensions in the region.
The fence will cover about 84 miles of the border with Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland. Lithuania said the high-technology fence will go up by 2020 with the aim of preventing Russian “provocations” and “spying.”
“We must ensure credible control of our eastern border of the European Union, and the time frames planned earlier are far too distant,” Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said at a press conference Monday, according to The Baltic Times.
Anton Alikhanov, Kaliningrad’s acting governor, responded to the news by offering to send bricks to Lithuania for the construction of a wall, BBC reports.
Lithuania and its Baltic neighbors have been on high alert since Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014.
The Lithuanian government has distributed a 75-page booklet on how citizens should react in the event of an invasion. Many Lithuanians also enroll in survival classes on the weekends in preparation for an invasion. (RELATED: Tiny Baltic Country Ready To Pave ‘Roads With Corpses Of Russian Soldiers)
NATO has significantly stepped up its presence in the region with about 4,000 U.S. troops in the Baltics and Poland.
A group of 300 Marines arrived in Norway Monday for a six-month deployment close to the Russian border. It is the first time since World War II that foreign troops have been allowed to be stationed there.
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