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NATO begins massive war exercise Steadfast Defender 2024. Russia calls NATO a return to Cold War schemes. Photo/REUTERS
MOSCOW – NATO has started a massive war exercise called Steadfast Defender 2024 involving 90,000 troops. Russia responded by saying the alliance had returned to Cold War schemes.
“This exercise is another element of the hybrid war that the West is waging against Russia,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told the RIA news agency, Sunday (21/1/2024).
“An exercise of this magnitude marks NATO’s return to the final and irrevocable Cold War scheme, when military planning processes, resources and infrastructure were being prepared for confrontation with Russia,” he explained.
The Steadfast Defender 2024 war games will run until the end of May and involve units from all 31 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) member countries plus potential new members; Sweden.
“The Alliance will demonstrate its ability to strengthen the Euro-Atlantic region through transatlantic force movements from North America,” said NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Christopher Cavoli in Brussels last Thursday.
According to the US general, this large-scale NATO maneuver consists of a series of smaller individual exercises, taking place from North America to NATO’s eastern flank, near the Russian border.
It will involve 50 Navy ships, 80 aircraft and more than 1,100 combat vehicles. Furthermore, this maneuver—the largest since the 1988 Reforger exercises during the Cold War—came as NATO overhauled its defenses in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The US-led alliance has sent thousands of troops to its eastern flank and laid out the most extensive plans since the collapse of the Soviet Union to protect itself from a Russian attack.
Adm. Rob Bauer, chairman of NATO’s military committee, said the scale of the exercise was a demonstration of the alliance’s renewed readiness.