NATO has initiated its largest military exercises since the Cold War, involving around 90,000 military personnel from its 32 member states. This operation, Steadfast Defender 2024, focuses on readiness for a war with Russia, which is currently engaged in a conflict with Ukraine.
The scale of the Steadfast Defender exercises harks back to the Reforger exercises of 1988, which saw 188,000 NATO troops mobilize as the Soviet Union began to crumble. Steadfast Defender involves 50 warships, including aircraft carriers and destroyers, and 1,100 combat vehicles, including 150 tanks and 400 armored personnel carriers (APCs).
General Carsten Breuer, Germany’s defense chief, believes NATO must expect a potential threat from Russia within five to eight years. “For me as military, five to eight years means I have to be ready in five years,” Breuer stated.
Steadfast Defender focuses training on vulnerable regions, particularly the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Poland and new NATO member Sweden. In Lithuania, NATO troops conducted operations near the Belarusian border, a strategic area given Belarus’ alliance with Russia and its proximity to the militarized Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Russia regards the exercises as a “threat.”
“Near the Russian border, NATO’s reconnaissance activities are increasing, the intensity of operational combat training of the alliance’s troops is growing, during which scenarios for conducting combat operations against the Russian Federation, including the launch of nuclear strikes on our territory, are being worked out,” concurs General Vladimir Kulishov, of Russia‘s Federal Security Service (FSB).
