NATO Military Exercises Aim To Send Message Of Resolve To Russia
NATO countries are staging massive air, land and sea exercises across Russia's northern borders this month in response to warnings from the Kremlin and strategic analysts that President Vladimir Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons are more than bluster.
The exercises in Estonia, Lithuania and Norway involve more than 21,000 troops and state-of-the-art military hardware. Coupled with U.S. training of Ukrainian forces and the recent activation of a 3,000-strong rapid-reaction force to defend Eastern Europe, they appear intended to send a message to Moscow that the alliance is ready to defend its new members in Russia's backyard.
Troops, trainers and readiness testers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have been bolstering defenses along what Eastern Europeans call the new Iron Curtain. Although it still divides East from West, this time there are former Soviet subjects on the western side of the ideological border.
NATO's widening presence along Russia's frontiers is a reaction to Putin's aggressive actions against Ukraine over the last year, which have rattled nerves throughout the arc of states that still has painful memories of postwar Soviet domination.
On Monday, Estonia launched the biggest ground maneuvers in its history, Operation Hedgehog, drawing 13,500 troops from across the 28-nation alliance. In Lithuania, Operation Lightning Strike deployed more than 3,000 soldiers and police officers on a mission to test the effectiveness of military-civilian collaboration. The goal: to defeat the kind of stealth invasion and proxy war that Ukraine has been fighting for more than a year against pro-Russia separatists whom the Kremlin denies arming and instigating.
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http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-nato-nuclear-threat-20150507-story.html#page=1
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