Trudeau pledges more troops to Latvia

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emerged from a private huddle with his Latvian counterpart on Thursday with a promise to bolster Canada's military presence by deploying more Canadian Armed Forces officers to the Baltic state.

Trudeau did not, however, grant the top request from Latvian Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš: throwing Canada's clear support behind calls for dramatically expanded and permanent NATO forces in Latvia and fellow Baltic states Lithuania and Estonia.

“We do have to reassess the risk posture and how much we need to stand together against potential Russian incursions and aggression,” Trudeau told reporters following his meeting with Kariņš. “And that is a conversation that we are having.”

Kariņš had gone into his closed-door meeting with Trudeau hoping to press the need for a dramatically enhanced military presence in the Baltics to counter any Russian perceptions of NATO weakness in the area.

Canada has nearly 700 troops leading a NATO battlegroup in Latvia, one of four such forces in the Baltics and Poland created in 2016 to deter and slow any Russian attack. The alliance is planning four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

In an interview with The Canadian Press ahead of his meeting with Trudeau, Kariņš said the Canadians are performing admirably alongside counterparts from nine other alliance members, and that his country is grateful for their presence.

Trudeau wouldn't say whether Canada supports dramatically expanding the battlegroups and making them permanent. He instead announced the pending deployment of one general and six staff officers from the Armed Forces to a NATO headquarters near the Latvian capital of Riga, where they would help co-ordinate alliance activities in the Baltics.