Lithuanian president joins call for higher defence expenditure

Lithuania has joined calls for higher military spending from NATO member states.

"We must work together to convince our NATO partners to increase defence spending," said Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda at a joint press conference with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda on Friday.

The two presidents had attended a joint military exercise by the armed forces of both countries in the so-called "Suwalki Gap," a strategically important area on NATO's eastern flank.

Duda recently proposed that NATO should oblige its members to spend at least 3% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence each year.

Nausėda said that he agreed with Duda that the current target of 2% of GDP was not enough in these "dynamic and complicated times."

Poland spends more than 4% of its economic output on defence - a goal Nausėda said Lithuania was aiming for also.

The Suwalki Gap is a term to describe a strip of land just 70 kilometres wide that lies between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and along the Lithuanian-Polish border. A theoretical Russian advance there could cut off the Baltic states from the other NATO countries.