NATO was set to launch a new multinational force in Romania yesterday to counter Russia along its eastern flank and to check a growing Russian presence in the Black Sea following the Kremlin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.
Initially a small force relying on troops from 10 NATO countries including Italy, Canada as well as Romania, the land, air and sea deployments will complement about 900 US troops already in place.
“Our purpose is peace, not war,” Romanian President Klaus Iohannis told the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Bucharest. “We are not a threat for Russia, but we need dialogue from a strong position of defense and discouragement.”
Photo: Reuters / Inquam Photos
Russia accuses NATO of trying to encircle it and threatening stability in Eastern Europe, which NATO denies. Around the Black Sea, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey are NATO members while Georgia and Ukraine aspire to join.
The NATO force aims to develop its allied presence in the Black Sea region without escalating tensions, as it seeks to counter Russia’s own plans to create what military analysts say is a “buffer zone.”
The 2008 Russian operation to put troops in Georgia’s South Ossetia’s region, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014 and its annexation of Crimea have raised the stakes, with all sides warning of a new, Cold-War style scenario.
Details of the new force size were unclear. Based inland at a base near the southern Romanian city of Craiova, the land component of the force involves a brigade-size multinational NATO force, typically some 3,000 to 4,000 troops, but the contribution of non-Romanian troops is modest.
Romania amd Poland are the biggest troop contributors. Bulgaria, Italy and Portugal will train regularly with the force, and Germany is also expected to contribute.
In additional to existing NATO Black Sea naval patrols, a maritime presence will include more allied visits to Romanian and Bulgarian ports, training and exercises.
NATO air forces will also be limited at first but Britain is deploying fighter planes to Romania. Canada is already patrolling Romanian air space along with national pilots. Italy is patrolling Bulgarian air space.
“It sends a signal of NATO’s resolve,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the parliamentary assembly and who was scheduled to visit the troops later yesterday.
He stressed that NATO also had a 40,000-strong response force in case of a conflict.
Some Eastern Europeans want NATO’s new ballistic missile defense shield, which includes a site in Romania, to be part of NATO’s eastern posture vis-a-vis Russia.
“The Aegis Ashore system would add another level of deterrence,” said Maciej Kowalski, an analyst at the Polish Casimir Pulaski Foundation, referring to the US-built system.
NATO says the system is to intercept any Iranian rockets.
NATO says the relatively light new multinational model recalls allied support for West Berlin in the 1950s, when British, French and US forces ensured the Soviet Union could not control all Berlin.
Romania pushed for a bigger NATO naval presence on the Black Sea for more than a year, but found that Bulgaria wary of provoking Russia. Turkey only supports limited NATO reinforcements, concerned about breaking international rules limiting the scale of patrols in the Black Sea.
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