WARSAW: Lakes, forest and villages dot the rolling hills along Poland’s 65-kilometre (40-mile) stretch of border with Lithuania, but for NATO’s top brass, this bucolic landscape gives cause for sleepless nights.
Sandwiched between Russia’s highly militarized Kaliningrad exclave and Belarus, strategists dub the idyllic stretch of countryside the Suwalki Gap.
They warn it is the Achilles’ heel of NATO’s eastern flank: its capture would amputate the alliance’s three Baltic members and so shatter its credibility.
Fears that Russia could attempt an attack surged after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, a move which sent East-West relations to their lowest point since the …read more
Source: The Manila Times
