... To all intents and purposes, it is a de facto front line. Following the 2014 Ukraine crisis, relations between Russia and NATO have turned as hostile as they were during the Cold War. Small Western military contingents are now deployed in each of the Baltic states. Poland is emerging as a new hub for the U.S. military presence in Europe.
Russia’s relations with non-NATO countries in the Baltic Sea region—Sweden and Finland—have also become markedly strained. Stockholm has just decided on a major increase in its defense spending, citing the Russian threat. Moscow, of course, has always considered Sweden an informal ...
... example here is Exercise DEFENDER Europe 20, planned for the spring of 2020, which will practice new,
more Cold War-like scenarios
involving the defence of NATO’s eastern flank. Georgia, although formally a participant in the drill of nearly 40,000 NATO troops mainly deployed in Poland and the Baltic states, will only be involved in airdropping a small multinational force.
Armenia and Azerbaijan: a powder keg
Sergey Markedonov:
The Trans-Caucasus in 2019 Is Not a Monolithic Region
Another hotspot in Transcaucasia is the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict....
This new ELN policy brief looks at ways to reduce the risk of military confrontation between Russia and NATO, namely in the Baltic region. The authors argue that steps to ensure military stability are not only possible, but are also mutually beneficial.
This new ELN policy brief looks at ways to reduce the risk of military confrontation between Russia ...
... over the Ukrainian crisis and other problematic parts of the world continue to pose complications for both sides. The Ukrainian crisis in particular did much to intensify tensions between Russia and the EU, particularly the Baltic States. While the Baltic States are institutionally dependent on the EU and NATO, the nature of relations in this specific case are more complex than the relations between Western Europe and Russia. The irony is that Moscow, technically, is capable of establishing good ties with Portugal, Greece, Italy, Germany, and any other ...
... outside NATO programmes would make for more effective defence. The Russian army, which has on more than one occasion proved to be able to redeploy its forces quickly may, Kacprzyk believes, launch a lightning-swift operation and “cut off” the Baltic states from the rest of the continent and, taking advantage of the location of the Kaliningrad Region, block NATO forces’ advance. The advantages of the stationing of American forces: in the event of a Russian attack, the US military. owing to prompt decision-making (unlike the bureaucratic NATO) and its professionalism could hold off the Russian army ...
... Serbian-Hungarian border. To date, the subject of deploying U.S. military hardware has not been widely discussed in Europe despite the potential serious consequences of this initiative by the Pentagon, particularly with regard to relations between Russia and NATO.
The U.S. project officially became known a month prior in mid-June 2015, when The New York Times
published an article
reporting on the Pentagon’s plans to place combat tanks, infantry vehicles and other types of heavy weapons in Baltic and ...
... Security
in 2015,
Atlantic Council, RIAC and ELN Report
The Pentagon has all but abandoned the idea of having heavily equipped NATO forces permanently stationed in Europe. The three remaining brigades in Western Europe now operate on a rotational basis ... ...
Perhaps this is how we should look at the plans to move a part of the United States’ heavy weaponry to Poland and the Baltic states, which have become more convenient places for U.S. troops to store their military equipment, from both the political ...
... discussions which are constantly stirred up and imposed on the public in no way means there is broad support for the idea of NATO membership in Swedish and Finnish society.
The recent election of the Social-Democratic government in Sweden took place to ... ... cooperation.
I would like to note in relation to this that the countries of Northern Europe started to pay increased attention to the Baltic states as soon as they gained their independence, and focused on developing various forms of cooperation with them. The ...
