Lithuanian and Polish Defence Ministers announced they will hold a joint defence council meeting in 2020, the Lithuanian MoD told reporters in Vilnius on Friday.

According to the Polish Press Agency (PAP), Lithuanian Defence Minister Raimundas Karoblis met with his Polish counterpart Mariusz Blaszczak during the reburial ceremony of the 1863 anti-Tsarist uprising.



The Polish and Lithuanian presidents agreed to set up a joint defence council back in February 2019 under the leadership of Lithuania's former president, Dalia Grybauskaitė, according to PAP.

Her adviser at the time, Nerijus Aleksiejūnas, told Žinių Radijas radio in February 2019 that the council would look after common defence interests.



According to Aleksiejūnas, these include "exchanging information on airspace monitoring, affiliations between certain Lithuanian and Polish brigades," and the defence of the 100-kilometre wide Suwalki corridor connecting Poland and Lithuania, flanked by Russia's Kaliningrad on one side and Belarus on the other.