Residents of Polish region key for NATO try to live normally despite threat

Suwalki, Poland – 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 gray barbed-wire fence stretching into the distance, the 104-kilometer 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.