Baltic nations are increasingly worried that Russian war games set
for this autumn will see President Vladimir Putin send as many as
100,000 troops to Belarus’ border with Lithuania and Poland -- the very
edge of the Kremlin’s sphere of influence with eastern Europe.
At a
recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Russia, Sen. Bob
Menendez, D-New Jersey, said he’d met recently with Baltic ambassadors
who said the planned “Zapad” exercises, set for September, could involve
that many Russian troops, which would be a significant increase on the
number that took part in previous drills under the same name in 2013 and
2009.
