NATO\u2019s biggest military manoeuvres since the Cold War kicked off Thursday in Norway in a hypothetical scenario that involves restoring the Scandinavian country\u2019s sovereignty after an attack by a \u201cfictitious aggressor.\u201d Russia, which shares a border with Norway, was briefed by NATO on the Trident Juncture 2018 drill and invited to monitor it, but Moscow is still angered by the exercise. Russia\u2019s defense minister had warned that Moscow could be forced to respond to increased NATO activity close to its western border.<\/p>\n
\u201cNATO\u2019s military activities near our borders have reached the highest level since the Cold War times,\u201d Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday, noting that the war games will be \u201csimulating offensive military action.\u201d The wargames bring together around 50,000 personnel from all 29 NATO allies, plus partners Finland and Sweden. Around 65 vessels, 150 aircraft and 10,000 vehicles will participate.<\/p>\n
The drill scheduled to end Nov. 7 takes place in central and eastern Norway, the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. Its aim is to ensure that NATO forces are trained, able to operate together, and ready to respond to any threat from any direction, according to the 29-member alliance.<\/p>\n
In a joint op-ed published Thursday in Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden\u2019s largest newspapers, the Nordic defense and foreign ministers said they saw \u201cno military threats against the Nordic countries today, but we live in an unpredictable and uncertain time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia has both shown the will and ability to use military force to achieve strategic goals,\u201d Sweden\u2019s Peter Hultqvist wrote together with Frank Bakke-Jensen of Norway, Denmark\u2019s Claus Hjort Frederiksen, Jussi Niinisto of Finland and Iceland\u2019s foreign minister, Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson.<\/p>\n
\u201cCyber-attacks and disinformation are actively used to create divisions between people in Europe as well as in the United States, which in turn challenges democratic institutions and our ability to reach common conclusions,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NATO\u2019s biggest military manoeuvres since the Cold War kicked off Thursday in Norway in a hypothetical scenario that involves restoring the Scandinavian country\u2019s sovereignty after an attack by a \u201cfictitious aggressor.\u201d Russia, which shares a border with Norway, was briefed by NATO on the Trident Juncture 2018 drill and invited to monitor it, but Moscow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45459,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45457\/revisions\/45459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}