NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced Wednesday that the military alliance will double the number of battlegroups it has deployed in Eastern Europe. Stoltenberg made the announcement ahead of a major NATO summit that will be attended by President Biden on Thursday.
“The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland,” Stoltenberg said. “This means that we will have eight multinational NATO battlegroups all along the eastern flank, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.”
Stoltenberg didn’t detail how many troops would be in the new battlegroups. According to a NATO fact sheet from 2021, there are 4,615 NATO troops spread across the four battlegroups that are currently deployed across Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
Stoltenberg also hinted that there will be other plans for NATO to bolster its forces in Eastern Europe announced at Thursday’s summit. “I expect leaders will agree to strengthen NATO’s posture in all domains, with major increases in the eastern part of the alliance on land, in the air and at sea,” he said.
Over the past few months, the US has deployed tens of thousands of additional troops to Europe and is expected to send more, or at least make the deployments permanent. Sources told NBC News on Tuesday that Biden is expected to announce a plan to permanently maintain an increased number of troops in NATO countries near Ukraine.
The US and NATO military buildup in Eastern Europe is done in the name of deterring Russia. But some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s primary motivations for the invasion were Ukraine’s alignment with NATO and the Western military alliance’s presence on Russia’s borders. In the lead-up to the attack, Putin sought security guarantees that NATO wouldn’t expand further eastward, but the US didn’t take his concerns seriously.
How to identify a Russian Troll in the comments? Click on the name and you’ll see that they have posted thousands of comments, always in favor of Russia. Ignore these guys. They don’t even believe what they type.
How to identify a fascist troll – see above.
Says the guy with 4.5K comments. That’s a full time troll job.
Logic’s not your strong suit, is it?
The commenter you’re replying to has posted 4,500 comments — over the course of 13 years as a member of Disqus. That’s an average of less than one per day.
You’ve been a member of Disqus for 9 days, and have posted 39 comments. Most of them just trolling about trolls.
All paid in rubles ?
Stay in your own world.
You crave war and reviewing your posts, calling everyone you disagree with a “russian troll” is pathetically idiotic.
Troll
Exhibit A
Exhibit B, you have 13.2K comments. That’s employment right there.
Stop projecting.
4 more battle groups Russia will destroy in the first day. Good luck with that.
There’s nothing NATO forces can do but fantasize a Putin coup, wherein they would then swoop in to try and reinforce Moscow’s new Russian government before surviving hardliners got any nukes off.
Conventional forces in a nuclear-armed world exist only to protect nuclear arsenals. NATO, was meant to blunt a Soviet thrust across the Fulda gap, and after failing that, go nuclear.
NATO conventional forces would then sweep up after the nuclear war, which was also always fantasy. In real nuclear war, they’d die on the field and in their bunkers from fallout and nuclear winter.
Russian nukes are on a dead hand switch; any killing off of the legal Russian government, invites nuclear war by default.
Double Down all you want…. Russia still defeat every one of them…!
NATO: “Woof, woof, ruff, ruff”
Hype and propaganda.
NATO has stripped out of Europe almost all of its ground forces. Doubling nothing is still nothing.
The US Army sent its European NATO armored corps to Iraq, then brought them home and disbanded them. There are no major US ground forces in Europe beyond a rapid response lightly armed Airborne brigade (1/3 of a division) located in Italy.
Germany disarmed, down from 12 Panzer Divisions to one, and that one without much of its equipment.
Britain has so much stripped down that they recently debated giving up the last tanks of their last armored brigade, located back home not on the Continent.
France did its reductions by reducing its divisions to 1/3 size, and then only keeping 1/3 of those. They use very old equipment.
Nobody else has anything in NATO’s land forces. Belgium? Poland has three-decade-out-of-date former Soviet gear — Ukraine itself is far better off.
So NATO flatly can’t defend itself in a conventional land war, nor can it intervene in Ukraine. We pretend, bluff, bluster, and fool only ourselves and our own media readers.