NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine.
The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year.
The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and demands for increased European military spending.
Photo: AP
Trump on Wednesday announced his intention to negotiate with Russia directly, and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at his first meeting with NATO colleagues in Brussels that day that European nations should dramatically increase their defense spending and shoulder the “overwhelming share” of funding for Ukraine.
Greek and Spanish marines led Thursday’s military demonstration, an amphibious assault near the central Greek city of Volos, in the first full-scale operational deployment of NATO’s new Allied Reaction Force (ARF).
Established in July last year, the force represents NATO’s latest strategic evolution, designed to deploy at scale within 10 days and combining conventional forces with cyber and space-based technologies.
“This is what we’ve been training for,” the ARF’s commander, Italian Lieutenant General Lorenzo D’Addario, said after the 90-minute demonstration.
“The thinking is that NATO wanted to have a force that is ready, that is flexible, that can operate across the five domains — air, sea, land, but indeed cyber and space — in a way that ensures it answers the [needs] of defending the alliance, but also deterring” conflict, he said.
Western military officials — anticipating lasting tension with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, possibly beyond the Ukraine conflict — argue that NATO’s new capability is becoming increasingly important to reinforce its eastern flank.
“As we soon approach the anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, we see today a revitalized and refocused NATO,” said Canadian Lieutenant General Peter Scott, the deputy commander of NATO’s Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy, who also attended the exercise.
He described the exercise as “a significant milestone, an accomplishment in the modernization and expansion of NATO’s readiness to defend every inch of allied territory.”
Scott said preparations for the exercise started two years ago and followed cooperation with planners from non-participating countries, including the United States.
“But in future exercises, there’ll be a different make up of countries that are going to participate. But purely for this one, that’s just the way it rolls out,” he said.
The current exercise involves forces from nine NATO members, including regional rivals Greece and Turkey, deploying 17 naval vessels, more than 20 aircraft and over 1,500 military vehicles. Britain leads the operation with 2,600 military personnel and 730 vehicles, assuming command of all land forces during the drills.
The drills, which end on Feb. 26, focus on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations across air, land, sea and special forces, underscoring NATO’s shifting military posture along its eastern boundaries.
Participating nations are Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the UK. Earlier this week, communist-backed groups staged small protests near the training area in central Greece, opposing the country’s involvement in overseas deployments.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS