'Trying to live normally': residents urge calm at strategic NATO chokepoint

Goats and cows graze among the lakes and woods that adorn a stretch of borderland in northeastern Poland, unaware that the eyes of armies around Europe are fixed on their remote idyll.

Sparsely populated yet immensely fortified, with a grey barbed-wire fence stretching into the distance, the 104-kilometre (65-mile) Suwalki Gap is one of the most strategic points along NATO's eastern flank.

Dividing Russia's Kaliningrad exclave from its ally Belarus, and connecting the Baltic states to the rest of the NATO alliance, it has become a focus of Western fears following Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The wooded valleys and rolling meadows have not yet been marked by the drone alerts or provocations seen elsewhere in eastern Poland or its Baltic neighbours -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

But drills and military exercises by NATO, Polish and Lithuanian forces, plus heavy fortifications, are a common sight for locals -- many of whom insist that life must go on.

- Living 'day to day' -

The latest exercises took place on a September Saturday in Suwalki -- a town of 70,000 people -- preparing residents to evacuate in case of a Russian threat.

Soldiers and firefighters explained to locals the system of warning sirens and emergency messages, how to respond and how to prepare emergency kits.

"We also remind people how to find the nearest shelter" via a telephone application, Pawel Godlewski, a senior city firefighter, told AFP.

The preparations, which include civil defence drills and information campaigns, are generally treated as preventative measures, rather than signs of an imminent threat.

Surrounded by lakes, forests and pastoral landscapes, the town showed no sign of high alert, its shops and cafe terraces busy.

While residents said they were ever aware of their geographic position, they preferred to proceed with caution rather than alarm.

"People tend to downplay how serious the situation is and not think about it," Grazyna Orawska, a retired physiotherapist from Suwalki, told AFP.

"They live day to day, thinking about vacations" and everyday concerns, she added.

- Three-border junction -

A road sign in Wisztyniec, in the far northeast of Poland, diplays the region's geostrategic importance: Kaliningrad 155 km, Moscow 961 km, Vilnius 165 km, Warsaw 265 km, and the meeting point between the Polish, Russian and Lithuanian borders 450 metres away.

A student, Weronika Leszka, came by herself to see the spot along with its heavy fortifications and barbed wire.

"The situation is probably not as safe as it once was, but we are nevertheless trying to live normally," she told AFP.

"I think that if we follow certain rules of caution, nothing will happen to us."

Warsaw, NATO and the European Union are working together to strengthen the eastern borders of Poland and the Baltic states, amid numerous reports of non-conventional "hybrid" acts of war in Europe, blamed on Russia.

The region regularly features in European security planning, where these powers are installing defence systems, trenches, barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles across fields and meadows.