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KYIV — If NATO decides to establish an army brigade next door to Russia in one of the three tiny Baltic states, Canada will seriously consider contributing troops to such a force, Defence Minister Jason Kenney says.

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“We will certainly consider any requests that come our way,” he said in a telephone interview from Ottawa this week, adding he expected the subject to come up at the next NATO defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels on June 24.

“We see an ongoing need and a role for Canada to play. We are the only NATO member that does not have a permanent troop presence in Europe. We do think we have a role to play through periodic deployments of this nature.”

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which left the Soviet Union when it collapsed 25 years ago and joined NATO in 2004, have been asking the alliance again to establish such a combat base.

They argue this is urgently needed to act as a check on President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions since he unsettled Europe last year, seizing Crimea from Ukraine and sending Russian troops and weaponry to aid separatists in eastern Ukraine.