{"id":255411,"date":"2022-06-28T07:44:32","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T07:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=255411"},"modified":"2022-06-30T05:27:07","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T05:27:07","slug":"nato-to-have-over-300000-troops-at-higher-readiness-stoltenberg-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=255411","title":{"rendered":"NATO to have over 300,000 troops at higher readiness, Stoltenberg says"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Reuters June 27, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Madrid summit to adapt NATO stance towards Russia<\/li>\n<li>Change driven by Russia&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine<\/li>\n<li>New strategy paper to brand Russia a &#8216;direct threat&#8217;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>BRUSSELS, June 27 (Reuters) &#8211; NATO will massively boost the number of troops on high readiness to over 300,000, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday, with allies set to adopt a new strategy describing Moscow as a direct threat four months into the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Russia has walked away from the partnership and the dialogue that NATO has tried to establish with Russia for many years,&#8221; Stoltenberg said in Brussels ahead of a NATO summit later this week in Madrid.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They have chosen confrontation instead of dialogue. We regret that &#8211; but of course, then we need to respond to that reality,&#8221; he told reporters.<\/p>\n<p>The June 28-29 summit comes at a pivotal moment for the alliance after failures in Afghanistan and internal discord during the era of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened to pull Washington out of the alliance. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/aerospace-defense\/nato-pledge-aid-baltics-ukraine-urge-turkey-let-nordics-2022-06-27\/\">read more <\/a><\/p>\n<p>But Russia&#8217;s February invasion of Ukraine has sparked a geopolitical shift, prompting once neutral countries Finland and Sweden to apply to join NATO and Ukraine to secure the status of candidate to join the European Union.<\/p>\n<p>Stoltenberg said NATO would transform its existing quick reaction force, the NATO Response Force, which already has some 40,000 troops on high readiness, and raise the overall number to &#8220;well over 300,000&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The move is part of NATO&#8217;s work on a new force structure that will likely see national troops put on different alert levels so the alliance has more combat-ready forces ready on short notice in case of a crisis.<\/p>\n<p>At the summit, NATO will also change its language on Russia from the current wording, enshrined at its Lisbon summit in 2010, describing Moscow as a strategic partner.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I expect the allies will state clearly that Russia poses a direct threat to our security, to our values, to the rules-based international order,&#8221; Stoltenberg said.<\/p>\n<p>NATO combat units on the alliance&#8217;s eastern flank, especially in the Baltics, are to be boosted to brigade level, with thousands of pre-assigned troops on standby in countries further west like Germany as rapid reinforcements, he added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Together, this constitutes the biggest overhaul of our collective deterrence and defence since the Cold War,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Stoltenberg dampened hopes for a break-through at the summit to overcome Turkey&#8217;s opposition to the membership bids of Sweden and Finland.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I will not make any promises or speculate about any specific time lines, The summit has never been a deadline,&#8221; said Stoltenberg, who is scheduled to meet the leaders of all three countries in Madrid on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Reporting by Sabine Siebold and Marine Strauss, editing by Mark Heinrich<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/europe\/nato-massively-increase-high-readiness-forces-300000-stoltenberg-2022-06-27\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NATO to increase the number of its troops ready for rapid response from 40,000 to over 300,000. In essence they are preparing to put a massive army on a war footing at a moment&#8217;s notice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=255411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255412,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255411\/revisions\/255412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=255411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=255411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=255411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}