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NATO eastern-flank states talk security amid Belarus border crisis

26.11.2021 11:00
Defence ministers from nine countries on the eastern edge of NATO have conferred on how to respond to security challenges including a migrant crisis on Poland's border with Belarus, news agencies have reported.
Mariusz Błaszczak
Mariusz BłaszczakPAP/Tomasz Waszczuk

The security consultations in Bucharest focused on the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border as well as on preparations for next year's NATO summit and relations between the Western military alliance and the European Union, Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said after the meeting.

He told reporters that he had briefed the gathering on "the hybrid attack" staged against Poland and its Baltic neighbours Lithuania and Latvia by Belarus' "Lukashenko regime."

"We talked about how to resolve this issue," Błaszczak said.

The gathering in the Romanian capital on Thursday brought together defence ministers from nations referred to as the Bucharest Nine (B9) group: Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia, Polish state news agency PAP reported.

The Bucharest Nine is a Polish-Romanian initiative launched in 2015 that aims to help exchange views and coordinate positions on the security of NATO’s eastern-flank countries.

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Source: PAP