Russia raps strongly NATO war games launched by the US-led military alliance on the country’s doorstep.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko made the remarks on Monday, when the alliance began the Nordic Response exercises that are scheduled to take place across Finland, Sweden, and Norway.
“The military is monitoring, we have all the necessary means for this. Our political position is well known. We believe that these exercises are demonstratively provocative,” he said.
“Any exercises, especially [those] that are held geographically close to the contact line, increase the risk of military incidents. Therefore, all necessary measures have been taken in order to ensure the defense capabilities of Russia,” the diplomat added.
The 11-day drills enlist around 20,000 troops from 14 NATO countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, France, and Spain. They also deploy more than 100 warplanes, military transport planes, naval surveillance aircraft, and helicopters as well as upwards of 50 vessels, including destroyers.
The drills are part of the alliance’s Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises that began on January 22 and are slated to last until May 31, as the biggest war games to be staged by the alliance since the Cold War.
The Nordic Response drills also boast integration into NATO by Finland, which joined the alliance last year, and the treaty’s close relations with Sweden, which is expected to join it by the yearend.
Moscow has explicitly warned the Scandinavian countries that they have fallen victim to “the Russophobic frenzy” that followed the initiation of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in 2022.
In January, President Vladimir Putin described NATO’s eastward expansion as “a problem that is being created…quite artificially in the foreign policy interests of the United States,” stressing that the actions of the Scandinavian states could aggravate “an already difficult situation in the sphere of international security.”
