NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine.
The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year.
The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and demands for increased European military spending.
Photo: AP
Trump on Wednesday announced his intention to negotiate with Russia directly, and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at his first meeting with NATO colleagues in Brussels that day that European nations should dramatically increase their defense spending and shoulder the “overwhelming share” of funding for Ukraine.
Greek and Spanish marines led Thursday’s military demonstration, an amphibious assault near the central Greek city of Volos, in the first full-scale operational deployment of NATO’s new Allied Reaction Force (ARF).
Established in July last year, the force represents NATO’s latest strategic evolution, designed to deploy at scale within 10 days and combining conventional forces with cyber and space-based technologies.
“This is what we’ve been training for,” the ARF’s commander, Italian Lieutenant General Lorenzo D’Addario, said after the 90-minute demonstration.
“The thinking is that NATO wanted to have a force that is ready, that is flexible, that can operate across the five domains — air, sea, land, but indeed cyber and space — in a way that ensures it answers the [needs] of defending the alliance, but also deterring” conflict, he said.
Western military officials — anticipating lasting tension with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, possibly beyond the Ukraine conflict — argue that NATO’s new capability is becoming increasingly important to reinforce its eastern flank.
“As we soon approach the anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, we see today a revitalized and refocused NATO,” said Canadian Lieutenant General Peter Scott, the deputy commander of NATO’s Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy, who also attended the exercise.
He described the exercise as “a significant milestone, an accomplishment in the modernization and expansion of NATO’s readiness to defend every inch of allied territory.”
Scott said preparations for the exercise started two years ago and followed cooperation with planners from non-participating countries, including the United States.
“But in future exercises, there’ll be a different make up of countries that are going to participate. But purely for this one, that’s just the way it rolls out,” he said.
The current exercise involves forces from nine NATO members, including regional rivals Greece and Turkey, deploying 17 naval vessels, more than 20 aircraft and over 1,500 military vehicles. Britain leads the operation with 2,600 military personnel and 730 vehicles, assuming command of all land forces during the drills.
The drills, which end on Feb. 26, focus on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations across air, land, sea and special forces, underscoring NATO’s shifting military posture along its eastern boundaries.
Participating nations are Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the UK. Earlier this week, communist-backed groups staged small protests near the training area in central Greece, opposing the country’s involvement in overseas deployments.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees
RSS