While continuing to exchange barbs, the West and Russia are building a more institutionalized pattern of standoff in Europe that involves increasingly predictable tit-for-tat mirrored actions. Both sides profess their actions to be purely defensive, but these are increasingly robust defenses. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) forces are running a series of military exercises in the Baltic region, including Anakonda-16, to practice swift deployments of allied forces to counter a possible threat to Poland and the Baltic States. Some 31,000 allied soldiers are involved in Anakonda-16, including a Ukrainian contingent. NATO is cooperating ever closer with neutral Sweden and …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation