NATO was yesterday to start an exercise to defend its newly expanded Nordic territory when more than 20,000 soldiers from 13 nations take part in drills lasting nearly two weeks in the northern regions of Finland, Norway and Sweden.
With more than 4,000 Finnish soldiers taking part, the Norway-led Nordic Response 2024 represents the NATO newcomer’s largest-ever participation in a foreign exercise, the Finnish military said.
“For the first time, Finland will participate as a NATO member nation in exercising collective defense of the alliance’s regions,” the Finnish Defense Forces said in a statement.
photo: AP
Finland, which shares a 1,340km border with Russia, joined NATO in April last year in a historic move following decades of military non-alignment. Sweden is finalizing formalities to enter the military alliance as its 32nd member — most likely this month.
Both Sweden and Finland had developed strong ties with NATO after the end of the Cold War, but public opinion remained firmly against full membership until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nonalignment was seen as the best way to avoid tensions with Moscow, but the Russian aggression caused a dramatic shift in public opinion in both countries, and they applied jointly for NATO membership in May 2022.
For years, the biannual NATO drill, which has been conducted in the Arctic extremes of northern Norway, was called “Cold Response.”
However, “thanks to the NATO expansion with Finland and eventually Sweden, we are now expanding the exercise to a Nordic Response,” the Norwegian Armed Forces said on its Web site.
This year, the drill is hosted equally by Finland, Norway and Sweden. The participating nations in the exercise that runs through Friday next week are Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the US.
About half of the participating troops will drill on land. The rest will train at sea, with more than 50 participating submarines, frigates, corvettes, aircraft carriers and various amphibious vessels, and in the air with more than 100 fighter jets, transport aircraft, maritime surveillance aircraft and helicopters, the Norwegian military said.
The combined joint training are to focus on the defense and protection of the Nordic region, Norwegian military officials said.
“We need to be able to fight back and stop anyone who tries to challenge our borders, values and democracy,” Brigadier Tron Strand from the Royal Norwegian Air Force, commander of the Norwegian Air Operations Center, said in a statement.
“With the current security situation in Europe, the exercise is extremely relevant and more important than ever before,” he said.
“The High North represents an important and strategically located area for NATO” and the Nordic Response 2024 exercise “increases Nordic preparedness and the capability to conduct large-scale joint operations in challenging weather and climate,” NATO said on its Web site.
New Finnish President Alexander Stubb is to inspect the drill together with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in northern Norway on Thursday.
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