NATO Denies Preparing for War With Russia

Insists Military Exercises on Russian Border 'Enhance Security'

Last week, the European Leadership Network (ELN) published a report claiming that NATO and Russia are both making active preparations for full-scale war, citing massive military exercises on the border, and US war-gaming on “sustained” wars in Eastern Europe.

NATO is officially “denying” this, but the rest of their statement reads less like a denial than like an attempt to shift the blame to Russia, insisting all their preparations are response to “Russian aggression,” and that the exercises actually “enhance security in response to growing Russian aggression.”

The ELN report urged both sides to scale back their operations before the situation got out of hand, another idea NATO is rejecting, as they insist that the huge training exercises are “proportionate” and in line with international obligations.

NATO went on to say it is “unfair” to compare their military exercises on the Russian border to Russian exercises on the NATO border, because they’re both really quite different in some obvious, but totally unspecified, way.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.