Called “Nordic Response”, it includes exercises on land, at sea and in the air. The objective is to strengthen the responsiveness of NATO forces, in an increasingly tense context with Moscow.
In the heart of Lapland, a giant exercise is taking place in which these soldiers are participating, there are 20,000 of them in total, from around ten NATO member countries. This is the Alliance’s largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War.
The training area, which extends over more than 500 kilometers, was not chosen at random. Part of it is located not far from the border with Russia.
“Finnmark is, after all, the area where we anticipate possible aggression from Russia. It is therefore important to train ourselves in the area concerned“, explains Jørn Qviller, head of land defense in Finnmark.
“We learn to be disciplined. We must always look out for each other and ourselves. Then we always have to know what to do, and we have trained for that. This allows us to have many positive experiences, now and in the future“, explains Sebastian Maurud, a soldier participating in this exercise.
Alongside this exercise, which is expected to last two weeks, NATO inaugurated a tactical air base in central Albania, a member of the Alliance since 2009.
For this installation, NATO paid 50 million euros and the Albanian government 5 million euros. It is the only Alliance air base located in the Western Balkans. This military base will mainly be used to refuel aircraft and store weapons.