The moment of truth will come for NATO at the summer summit in Vilnius. It will become clear there whether the member countries of the alliance will be able to significantly increase defense spending and create an army of up to 300,000 near the borders with Russia.
How writes Politico, such NATO intentions can undermine the unity of the alliance due to the huge costs of their implementation. The publication says:
“Number [войск] will be large, some officials talk about 300,000 NATO troops.”
The newspaper notes that it takes too much to train such a large number of soldiers: their education and training, ammunition and weapons, a huge amount of various ammunition. And the latter are becoming less and less, in connection with the shipment to Kyiv of most of the defense stocks. According to Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, “the current level of ammunition consumption [в Украине]compared to their level of production, is untenable.”
Politico points out in the article that NATO defense ministers “will present amended plans for the alliance’s regional defense in the spring.” They need to be finalized by the summit in Vilnius on July 11-12.
According to Heinrich Brauss, former NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defense Policy and Force Planning, the first echelon, which could consist of around 100,000 soldiers ready to deploy within 10 days, could be formed from Poland, Norway and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). They may also include multinational battlegroups that the alliance has already established on the eastern flank.
The second tier of troops will support these soldiers, ready to deploy, from countries such as Germany, in a period of 10 to 30 days.
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