BRUSSELS – NATO’s Trident Juncture 18 exercise will draw in 45,000 troops,Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday, unveiling what officialsconfirmed would be the alliance’s biggest manoeuvres since the Cold War.
Stoltenberg said the exercise would simulate the defence of a member statefrom a “fictional” adversary, but the troops, tanks, ships and planes areheaded for Norway, the North Atlantic and the Baltic — opposite Russia.
It will be the biggest such movement of NATO personnel and vehicles sinceat least the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, although still smaller thanthe Vostok-18 exercise staged by Russia and China last month.
“The exercise is defensive, and it is transparent,” the NATO leader toldreporters on the first day of a two-day meeting of the 29-member alliance’sdefence ministers at its new Brussels headquarters.
“All members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe,including Russia, have been invited to send observers,” he said.
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The operation will bring alliance troops — equipped with 150 aircraft, 70vessels and around 10,000 land vehicles — from Britain, North America andcontinental Europe up through northern Europe and Scandinavia to NATO’snortheastern flank at the end of the month.
The Western allies have stepped up their military posture, with rotatinggarrisons in eastern Europe and the Baltic States, in the four years sinceRussia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea.
Exercises like Trident Juncture are designed to practice moving a largerforce forward quickly in the event of any outside intervention against aNATO member. – APP/AFP
