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Lithuania wants a permanent US troop presence as 'a game changer' to counter Russia

"It is important to have adequate response capabilities against possible threats," the Lithuanian president said.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite arrives at a EU leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 19, 2015.

The Lithuanian president has said she wants an ongoing US troop presence in her country in light of increased Russian activity in the region and in response to Moscow's preparations for military exercises in neighboring Belarus late this year.

"We need the serious involvement of the US to not only deter but to defend," President Dalia Grybauskaite told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, after a meeting with US Defense Secretary James Mattis. "It is important to have adequate response capabilities against possible threats."

Planned war games by Russia and Belarus slated for September could involve up to 100,000 troops and include nuclear-weapons training. Mattis has criticized the buildup ahead of the exercise, as well as Russia's deployment of missiles to Kaliningrad — its semi-enclave on the Baltic Sea.

"Any kind of buildup like that is simply destabilizing," Mattis said. Moscow

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"Russia is a threat," he said at the time. "They are saying our capital Vilnius should not belong to Lithuania because between the first and second world wars it was occupied by Poland."

"There are real parallels with Crimea's annexation [from Ukraine]," he added. "We are speaking of a danger to the territorial integrity of Lithuania."

Estonia's national intelligence report for 2016 said the "Baltic Sea area is especially vulnerable to threats from Russia" and that Russian intelligence agencies were conducting operations to influence the Estonian defense forces and public.

In recent months, NATO countries have stepped up their deployments to Eastern Europe, which is already bristling with offensive and defensive weaponry.

In Lithuania, a 1,000-member NATO force of troops from Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway is already on site. Battle groups from the UK and Canada are also headed to Poland, Latvia, and Estonia.

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Poland also plans to buy $7.6 billion worth of Patriot air-defense missiles to counter Moscow, which has been greeted with Russian ire.

There have been several encounters between NATO forces and their Russian counterparts in the Baltic Sea region in recent months.

French jets shadowed Russian fighters over the region earlier this year, in international airspace along NATO's northern border. Russian aircraft also did flybys of a US destroyer in February, which the US Navy called an unsafe maneuver.

This week, a Russian fighter flew within 20 feet of a Navy patrol craft — though the Navy called that encounter "safe and professional."

The Lithuanian president, like her counterpart in Estonia, has backed US President Donald Trump's calls for NATO member states increase their defense spending.

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