At a meeting with the President of Lithuania on May 10, 2017, Secretary of Defense James Mattis suggested that the United States would consider deploying Patriot units to the country. The Patriot system will reportedly be used for U.S. military exercises in the summer and withdrawn before Russia begins their own military exercises in the Baltics in September. When asked directly, Secretary Mattis responded that the United States would “make those decisions in consultation with the Lithuanian government,” adding that both Russia “and the world knows this is defensive not offensive, and we will only deploy defensive systems to make sure sovereignty is respected.”