Image by LCpl Craig Williams
British troops exercise in Estonia as part of the NATO’s eFP (Enhanced Forward Presence)
Think back a decade ago…before Mitt Romney was warning about Russia, and Barack was laughing saying the 1980s wanted its foreign policy back. I’m talking pre-2008, before the Russo-Georgia war. Things sure have changed when it comes to relations between Moscow and the West.
NATO Stages Biggest Exercises Since End Of Cold War
Yesterday, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Col. Gen. Alexander Fomin warned the NATO alliance was massing troops and heavy equipment near Russian borders, using military exercises to do so.
“NATO countries are arming. They are concentrating troops, heavy weapons, and armor in the Baltic countries, in Poland and other countries under the disguise of drills,” Fomin told reporters in Moscow on Friday.
“The modern military-political situation in the world remains complicated and turbulent. We are witnessing the formation of a polycentric model of world arrangement, the emergence of new centers of economic and political influence, and increasingly more intense rivalry between states,” Fomin told journalists.
Global and regional processes have been less predictable and involve attempts to transform generally recognized norms and revise principles of international law, Fomin said, reported The Baltic Times.
“This is determined primarily by the US’ and its allies’ desire to have unlimited global dominance and the demonstration of disregard for principles of equal and indivisible international security,” he added.
However, these current warnings from Moscow are a good example of the psychological term ‘projection’, when someone accuses others of doing what they are doing themselves.
Baltic Defense Ministers Agree To Raise Spending Above 2% NATO Goal
The Zapad exercises (Zapad means west), which are held every four years are growing in intensity and in the number of service personnel and equipment involved. The recent military mobilization in 2017 exercised tens of thousands of (some analysis said 100,000 but that number is doubtful) troops declared NATO. The games were held primarily in Belarus, on the border with Poland and the Baltics. Belarus is part of the ‘Union State’ with Russia, a relic of the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia has also been very active militarily in the Baltics and in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which sits directly in the middle of NATO territory, possibly allowing Russian forces to split the alliance. Kaliningrad is also heavily armed, including nuclear Iskander missiles.
