The German chancellor and defense minister attend the ceremony to launch an armored brigade in Lithuania, the first permanent deployment of foreign troops from Germany since WWII.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius are in Vilnius, Lithuania, today to celebrate the start of the deployment of an armored brigade to protect NATO's eastern flank. This is the first permanent deployment of foreign troops from Germany since the end of the Second World War. In parallel, other German ministers are meeting their counterparts from Denmark and Nigeria for bilateral talks.