9,000 Nato troops from 20 nations hold war games amid simmering tensions with Russia
- The Steadfast Defender 2021 drills are aimed at simulating the 30-nation military organisation’s response to an attack on any one of its members
- Top Nato brass insist that the exercises are not aimed at Russia specifically, but they focus on the Black Sea region
Already in recent years, the US and its allies have deployed troops and equipment in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to try to reassure those members neighbouring Russia that their partners will ride to the rescue should they come under attack.
Moscow’s decision last month to send thousands of troops to the border area with Ukraine has raised concern at the military alliance, which launched one of its biggest ever defence spending initiatives after Russian troops annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Top Nato brass insist that the military exercises, involving some 9,000 troops from 20 nations, are not aimed at Russia specifically, but they focus on the Black Sea region, where Moscow stands accused of blocking the free navigation of ships.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the exercises send an important message to any potential adversary: “Nato is ready.”
“Nato is there to defend all our allies, and this exercise sends a message about our ability to transport a large number of troops, equipment across the Atlantic, across Europe and also to project maritime power,” Stoltenberg said aboard a British aircraft carrier off the coast of Portugal.
The ship’s presence, part of a six-seven month deployment that will take it south past India, through Southeast Asia to the Philippine Sea, is aimed in part at restoring Britain’s tarnished image as a major global power since it left the European Union.
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Adorned with hi-tech US jets and flanked by warships from other Nato countries, the carrier strike force also stands as an important symbol of unity as the world’s biggest security organisation tries to recover from four tumultuous years under the Trump administration.
The war games tie in two new Nato command centres, one in Norfolk, Virginia; the other in Ulm, Germany. Part of the focus of its first phase was to protect the undersea cables that carry masses of commercial and communications data between the US and Europe.
Nato says Russia is mapping the cables’ routing and might have darker intentions.
“We all lulled ourselves into thinking that the Atlantic was a benign region in which there was not anything bad going on, and we could just use it as a free highway,” Norfolk’s commander, US Navy Vice-Admiral Andrew Lewis said.
“There are nations are out there mapping those cables. They may be doing something else bad. We have to be aware of that and answer that,” he told reporters.
“We’re ready to sit down with Russia, because we think it’s important to talk, especially when times are difficult,” Stoltenberg said. “The main challenge now is that Russia has not responded positively to our invitation, or our initiative, for a meeting of the Nato-Russia Council,” their top consultative forum.