Lithuania's Nauseda: Need to build strong deterrence to keep Kremlin at bay

Leaders of EU and neighbouring countries meet in Prague

(Corrects typo in headline)

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The West must build strong deterrence in its support of Ukraine to make sure that Russia does not want to risk expanding the war, Lithuania's president Gitanas Nauseda said on Friday on his arrival at a EU summit in Prague.

"We have to build very credible deterrents that Kremlin's regime does not want to test our ability to respond," he told reports.

"We have to be strong and not let us (be) manipulated because the Kremlin regime is very good at that," Nauseda added.

U.S. President Joe Biden earlier said Russian President Vladimir Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons is the biggest such threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as Russia's military leadership faced a rare domestic public backlash over the war in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Marine Strauss and Benoit Van Overstraeten)