NATO war games kick off in Lithuania
NEW YORK – INTERNATIONAL NEWS – As tensions escalate in the Ukraine, between NATA and Russia, the military exercises are being seen as possibly expanding the concerns.
The military effort is one of NATO’s largest exercises of land forces in the Baltics, and are being matched as the Russian Airforce is conducting exercises near the Ukraine border.
The stated goal of the Russian Airforce exercises are to prepare the country for any possible intrusion on Russian airspace.
The effect on the ground in the Ukraine is increased fear and worry over a possible military escalation of the crisis.Some families in the eastern Ukraine are leaving. They are boarding buses and rather than face the growing uncertainly, are leaving the area.
In a media statement from the United States Department of Defense, “The Russian annexation of Crimea and its actions on the Ukraine border have prompted NATO to undergo future self-evaluations in three areas, the alliance’s supreme allied commander for Europe said last week.
Speaking to American Forces Press Service during the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who also commands U.S. European Command, discussed how Russia has create a new paradigm in Europe. “If you look across the last 12 years, we have purposely set out to try to have a partnership relationship and make Russia a partner,” he said. “And we have made decisions about numbers of forces, readiness of forces [and] basing of forces on the fact that Russia was going to be a cooperative partner in the future.”
The general explained a timeline of events in which Russia has undertaken provocative actions detrimental to its cooperative partnership in NATO.
“What we’ve seen, unfortunately, — first in Georgia in 2008, and now in Crimea in ’14 — we have seen a nation mass forces on a border, cross an internationally recognized border and annex by force portions of a sovereign nation. We kind of thought that was over in Europe. But apparently it’s not, and so we will now have to look at three things in the future.”
