Nato warships are moored, during Baltic MCM Squadex 22 exercise, in Riga port, Latvia on March 16, 2022. Picture taken on March 16, 2022.ON BOARD THE SUPPLY SHIP ELBE, Latvia - Hours after Russian missiles first struck Ukrainian cities on Feb 24, German naval commander Terje Schmitt-Eliassen received notice to sail five warships under his command to the former Soviet Republic of Latvia to help protect the most vulnerable part of Nato's eastern flank.
A total of 12 Nato warships with some 600 sailors on board are due to start a mine-clearing operation in the coming days. In early February, China and Russia issued a powerful joint statement rejecting Nato's expansion in Europe and challenging the Western-led international order."We have reached a turning point," said retired German general Hans-Lothar Domroese, who led one of the highest Nato commands in the Dutch town of Brunssum until 2016.
The three tiny countries, with a combined population of some six million people, have a single overland link to the alliance's main territory. A corridor of some 65 km is squeezed between the heavily armed Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the west and Belarus on the east. "You cannot blame anybody for this , it is not attributable," the chief of the German navy, vice-admiral Jan Christian Kaack, told Reuters.Crucial for the Baltics is the land link between Kaliningrad and Belarus. Called the Suwalki Gap, its seizure would cut the Baltic states off.
On March 11, Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin the West was beefing up military forces close to Russia's Western borders. Putin asked Shoigu to prepare a report on how to respond. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Nato created small, multinational combat units in Poland and the three Baltic states, which serve as a forward presence to deter Moscow. But the force numbers are designed not to violate the "founding act," which has hindered Nato's ability to move troops into the Baltics and Poland on a permanent basis.
With ageing equipment and personnel shortages, Berlin had been seen for decades as a weak partner because of its reluctance to send troops to combat operations. Soon after Russia's invasion, Berlin announced it would buy 35 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets from the United States to replace its ageing Tornado fleet.The United States is also moving more military equipment into Europe, including vehicles and weapons to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland that could be used immediately by newly arriving US troops, rather than waiting weeks for tanks and trucks to be shipped from US bases.
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