Tag Archives: NATO

Baltics fear NATO plans too small to deter Russia

Lithuanian army officer Rocevicius looks at construction site of the newly built training premises for urban warfare in Pabrade

By Robin Emmott and Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) – Leaders in the Baltic countries and Poland fear the force NATO plans to deploy on their territory is too small and symbolic to deter an attack by Russia, whose 2014 annexation of Crimea is fresh in the memories of the former Soviet-bloc states.

They will this week press other ministers of the western military alliance to help them build an air defense system against Russian aircraft and missiles. But that would be a highly sensitive step, likely to be condemned by Moscow as yet more evidence of a NATO strategy threatening its borders.

Asked about the likelihood of Russian aggression in the Baltics, Lithuania’s Defense Minister Juozas Olekas told Reuters: “We cannot exclude it … They might exercise on the borders and then switch to invasion in hours.”

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia see themselves on the front line in any potential conflict with Moscow and say they are putting their armies on a war footing, meaning they can be mobilized almost immediately.

NATO defense ministers are set to agree this week on a new multinational force of 4,000 troops for the Baltics and Poland.

The United States, Germany and Britain are set to lead battalions of about 1,000 troops each. Canada may lead a fourth.

While the Baltic nations welcome the deployments, they say the build-up must go further – pointing to Russia’s efforts to develop an “anti-access” capability in the Kaliningrad exclave bordering Lithuania and Poland, using missiles and submarines to stop NATO moving reinforcements into the Baltics.

The Baltics want NATO fighters to protect their skies and are seeking medium-range missile interceptors from Norway’s Kongsberg Gruppen <KOG.OL> and U.S. defense contractor Raytheon <RTN.N>.

“We need to stop possible air aggression,” said Olekas. “We are discussing creating a regional medium-range air defense system together with the Latvians, the Estonians and the Poles.”

Olekas expects to raise the matter with NATO colleagues at the ministers’ meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels.

CREDIBILITY

The head of the Estonian defense force Lieutenant General Riho Terras said: “The first and foremost is the defense of our airspace. Air defense is the challenge that needs to solved together with the NATO alliance.”

“We are not talking about defense of Lithuania, we are talking about the credibility of the whole alliance,” said Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius.

But such calls would require stretched NATO governments to beef up the so-called air policing mission that regularly intercepts Russian jets flying over international waters close to the Baltic states.

The Baltic nations rely on their NATO allies’ quick reaction aircraft to patrol their skies, with no mandate to confront hostile aircraft in a conflict.

Four British Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets and four Portuguese F-16 fighter jets are currently carrying out the air policing mission. Officials say a lot more would be needed for air defense.

And southern NATO nations, focused on uncontrolled migrant flows and the failing states on Europe’s borders, may also be unwilling to grant more resources to the eastern flank.

Ben Hodges, the commander of the U.S. army in Europe, visited Vilnius last week. He echoed Baltic concerns about the strength of NATO’s deterrence.

“It is a transition,” Hodges said. “I hope that includes serious war fighting capabilities. Just putting garrisons of troops sitting in the countries … will not deter.”

Russia insists it poses no threat to the former Soviet states. Top NATO officials say talk of an impending attack is misleading, a view shared by Paris and Berlin.

Russia has held unannounced exercises on the borders of the Baltics, including one in 2014 which mustered 100,000 troops, according to Danish Colonel Jakob Sogard Larsen, who heads the new NATO command outpost in Lithuania.

“You see it differently when you live here,” Larsen said.

“We need to learn to fight total war again,” he said, in a sign of the return of a Cold War-style mood.

Lithuanian officials accuse Russia of trying to buy off Lithuanian soldiers and business people to become spies for the Kremlin, intimidating diplomats and spreading disinformation on the Internet and television.

Prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against someone they say is a high-ranking Russian intelligence officer arrested last year trying to recruit informants.

Russia denies any such activities.

SWITCH TO “CLASSIC WARFARE”

The NATO battalions are part of a deterrent to be approved by leaders at a summit in Warsaw in July. That will involve forces on rotation, warehoused equipment and a “spearhead” force backed by NATO’s 40,000-strong rapid reaction force.

Once the decision is made, Germany could deploy to Lithuania before September. Britain is expected to deploy to Estonia, the United States to Latvia and Canada possibly to Poland.

German and Danish soldiers fanned out across swamps and woodland in Lithuania this week in war games to learn the unfamiliar Baltic terrain and test their ability to move equipment and personnel quickly to a possible front.

Their tanks and armored vehicles were recently brought back from Afghanistan, desert-yellow camouflage painted over with the green-and-black colors of Baltic woodlands.

“We are changing our focus from counter-insurgency tactics back to classic warfare,” said German Lieutenant Colonel Marc-Ulrich Cropp from his camouflaged command tent at a Lithuanian military base. “Everyone has to be prepared.”

(Additional reporting by David Mardiste in Tallin and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. may turn to Canada for help with new NATO force

NATO flag flies at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels during a NATO ambassadors meeting o

By Robin Emmott and Wiktor Szary

BRUSSELS/WARSAW (Reuters) – The United States could turn to Canada to help it establish a new NATO force in eastern Europe as a deterrent against Russia because it is struggling to win support from its European allies, diplomats say.

Despite its show of force with a military exercise across eastern Europe this month that involved more than 20 NATO and partner countries, the alliance is moving slowly in its efforts to build a rotating force of 4,000 troops on its eastern flank in Poland and the Baltics.

Only Britain and Germany have said they are willing to contribute, by providing a battalion of about 1,000 troops each. The United States will provide a third battalion, leaving NATO requiring one more country to provide a fourth.

“European allies have reasons why they can’t come forward. They’re thinly stretched, at home, in Africa, in Afghanistan. They just don’t have the money,” said a senior NATO diplomat involved in the discussions.

The reluctance of some European governments to help the military build-up, the biggest since the end of the Cold War, reflects internal doubts over whether the alliance should be more focused on combating militant groups and uncontrolled flows of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa.

“There are divisions within NATO,” said Sophia Besch, a European defense expert at the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank. “Some allies feel the focus should be on the south.”

Unity is crucial for NATO as Moscow and Washington accuse one another of intimidation close to the NATO-Russia border. NATO and Russia feel threatened by each other’s large military drills and are at odds over the crisis in Ukraine.

Any sense in the United States that Europe is unwilling to pay for its own defense could be damaging. U.S. President Barack Obama has suggested European powers were “free riders” during the 2011 Libya air campaign, and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused them of not paying their fair share.

A senior Polish diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations said NATO would not allow the build-up to fail as it had already been announced, and because Russia might exploit it as a sign that NATO is unwilling to defend Poland.

“The summit in Warsaw will be President Obama’s last (NATO summit) and the U.S. wants it to be a success. It will ensure that the fourth framework country is found, possibly by leaning on Canada,” the source said. “Washington will bend over backwards here.”

“PERSISTENT” PRESENCE

Former communist states in NATO want to bolster its eastern defenses without stationing large forces permanently, worried since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine that Moscow could invade Poland or the Baltic states in days.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed such an idea this week, saying he saw no threats in the region that would justify the area’s militarization.

Russia has also said the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s large-scale military exercise in eastern Europe undermines trust and security, and that it is concerned by the movement of NATO’s military infrastructure towards its border.

NATO defense ministers will next week formally agree on the plan for four battalions to be involved in the new force, part of a deterrent made up of forces on rotation and warehoused equipment ready for a rapid response force in case of attack.

That force includes air, maritime and special operations units of up to 40,000 personnel.

While saying they seek to avoid a return to the Cold War, when 300,000 U.S. service personnel were stationed in Europe, NATO generals describe it as a “persistent” but not a “permanent” presence to avoid breaking a 1997 agreement with Moscow limiting the deployment of combat forces.

Britain is likely to deploy to Estonia, Germany to Lithuania and the United States to Latvia. The United States will also supply an armored brigade to rove around the eastern flank. Only Poland appears to be left out at this stage.

While the United States is increasing its military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion in 2017, defense cuts in Italy, Belgium and France during the euro zone debt crisis complicate military planning.

France says it is focused on fighting militants in Syria and Mali, while there are also tensions with Poland’s new right-wing government, which is seeking to rescind on a $3 billion helicopter tender with Airbus <AIR.PA>, diplomats say. Airbus was provisionally selected by the previous administration.

Spain is leading NATO’s special “spearhead” force that can deploy in less than a week. Smaller countries such as Denmark say they do not have the resources to deploy a battalion.

Italy, a major buyer of gas from Russia — on which the European Union depends heavily for energy supplies — is wary of taking a tough line on Moscow.

Rome is also upset with central and eastern European states for not showing more willingness to take refugees fleeing North Africa across the Mediterranean and into Italy.

That leaves Canada, which has 220 armed forces personnel in Poland.

“Canada is actively considering options to effectively contribute to NATO’s strengthened defense and deterrence posture,” said a spokesperson for the Canadian Department of National Defence.

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz told reporters in Warsaw on Thursday he expected any problems with the NATO plan to be “resolved in a positive manner.”

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

NATO likely to designate cyber as operational domain of war

A NATO flag flies at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels during a NATO ambassadors meeting on the situation in Ukraine and the Crimea region

BERLIN (Reuters) – NATO members will likely agree during a summit meeting in Warsaw next month to designate cyber as an official operational domain of warfare, along with air, sea, land and space, a senior German defense ministry official said Wednesday.

Major General Ludwig Leinhos, who heads the German military’s effort to build up a separate cyber command, told a conference at the Berlin air show that he expected all 28 NATO members to agree to the change during the coming Warsaw summit.

Leinhos, who previously held a senior job at NATO headquarters, said he also expected NATO members to agree to intensify their efforts in the cyber security arena.

The United States announced in 2011 that it viewed cyberspace as an operational domain of war, and said it would respond to hostile attacks in cyberspace as it would to any other threat.

Evert Dudok, a senior official with Europe’s largest aerospace company Airbus Group SE, called for adoption of Europe-wide or global standards in the cyber arena.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal)

NATO may rely on five battalions to deter Russia, Britain says

Soldiers from the NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo march outside their camp close to the town of Vushtri, in northern Kosovo,

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO’s build-up in eastern Europe could include up to 3,500 troops, Britain said on Friday, stressing that the planned deployments would not be aggressive toward Russia.

Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 has prompted the Western military alliance to consider deterrent forces in the Baltics and Poland which British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said would be a “trip wire” to alert NATO of any potential threat.

NATO defense ministers are expected to decide on the troop levels next month, while making clear no large forces will be stationed permanently, to avoid provoking the Kremlin.

“It looks like there could be four, maybe five battalions … the point of these formations is to act as a trip wire,” Hammond told reporters.

“It isn’t intended to be aggressive,” he said following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

Hammond said that could amount to as many as 3,500 troops along NATO’s border with Russia, with Britain, Germany and the United States taking the bulk of command duties.

In total, the deterrent will be made up of small eastern outposts, forces on rotation, regular war games and warehoused equipment ready for a rapid response force which would include air, maritime and special operations units.

NATO diplomats say the United States is likely to command two battalions, with Britain and Germany taking another each. That leaves a fifth NATO nation to come forward to lead the remaining battalion, with Denmark, Spain, Italy or the Netherlands seen as possible candidates, diplomats say.

The force build-up follows a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama in Estonia in 2014 in which he said NATO would help ensure the independence of the three Baltic states, which for decades were part of the Soviet Union.

NATO foreign ministers said they had agreed to propose to Moscow another meeting of the NATO-Russia Council, which met in April for the first time in nearly two years, to set out what the alliance says is a proportionate response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia in April 2014 in protest over Crimea. NATO said high-level political contacts with Russia could continue but NATO and Russian ambassadors have met only three times since.

“We are doing things that could be misinterpreted,” Hammond said. “We judged that creating an opportunity through the NATO-Russia Council is the best way of avoiding Russia being able to say: ‘we haven’t been informed, we didn’t know the details.'”

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Andrew Roche)

Russia will act to neutralize U.S. Missile shield threat

A view shows the command center for the newly opened ballistic missile defense site at Deveselu air base

By Vladimir Soldatkin

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) – A ballistic missile defense shield which the United States has activated in Europe is a step to a new arms race, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, vowing to adjust budget spending to neutralize “emerging threats” to Russia.

The United States switched on the $800 million missile shield at a Soviet-era base in Romania on Thursday saying it was a defense against missiles from Iran and so-called rogue states.

But, speaking to top defense and military industry officials, Putin said the system was aimed at blunting Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

“This is not a defense system. This is part of U.S. nuclear strategic potential brought onto a periphery. In this case, Eastern Europe is such periphery,” Putin said.

“Until now, those taking such decisions have lived in calm, fairly well-off and in safety. Now, as these elements of ballistic missile defense are deployed, we are forced to think how to neutralize emerging threats to the Russian Federation,” he said.

Coupled with deployment in the Mediterranean of U.S. ships carrying Aegis missiles and other missile shield elements in Poland, the site in Romania was “yet another step to rock international security and start a new arms race”, he said.

Russia would not be drawn into this race. But it would continue re-arming its army and navy and spend the approved funds in a way that would “uphold the current strategic balance of forces”, he said.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said on Thursday that the shield would not be used against any future Russian missile threat.

Frank Rose, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control, warned at the time that Iran’s ballistic missiles could hit parts of Europe, including Romania.

Putin said the prospect of a nuclear threat from Iran should no longer be taken seriously and was being used by Washington as an excuse to develop its missile shield in Europe.

The full defensive umbrella, when complete in 2018 after further development in Poland, will stretch from Greenland to the Azores.

It relies on radars to detect a ballistic missile launch into space. Sensors then measure the rocket’s trajectory and destroy it in space before it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. The interceptors can be fired from ships or ground sites.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Lidia Kelly and Richard Balmforth)

U.S. activates Romanian missile defense site, angering Russia

NATO and Romanian Prime Minister

By Robin Emmott

DEVESELU, Romania (Reuters) – The United States switched on an $800 million missile shield in Romania on Thursday that it sees as vital to defend itself and Europe from so-called rogue states but the Kremlin says is aimed at blunting its own nuclear arsenal.

To the music of military bands at the remote Deveselu air base, senior U.S. and NATO officials declared operational the ballistic missile defense site, which is capable of shooting down rockets from countries such as Iran that Washington says could one day reach major European cities.

“As long as Iran continues to develop and deploy ballistic missiles, the United States will work with its allies to defend NATO,” said U.S. Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Work, standing in front of the shield’s massive gray concrete housing that was adorned with a U.S. flag.

Despite Washington’s plans to continue to develop the capabilities of its system, Work said the shield would not be used against any future Russian missile threat. “There are no plans at all to do that,” he told a news conference.

Before the ceremony, Frank Rose, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control, warned that Iran’s ballistic missiles can hit parts of Europe, including Romania.

When complete, the defensive umbrella will stretch from Greenland to the Azores. On Friday, the United States will break ground on a final site in Poland due to be ready by late 2018, completing the defense line first proposed almost a decade ago.

The full shield also includes ships and radars across Europe. It will be handed over to NATO in July, with command and control run from a U.S. air base in Germany.

Russia is incensed at such of show of force by its Cold War rival in formerly communist-ruled eastern Europe. Moscow says the U.S.-led alliance is trying to encircle it close to the strategically important Black Sea, home to a Russian naval fleet and where NATO is also considering increasing patrols.

“It is part of the military and political containment of Russia,” Andrey Kelin, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official, said on Thursday, the Interfax news agency reported.

“These decisions by NATO can only exacerbate an already difficult situation,” he added, saying the move would hinder efforts to repair ties between Russia and the alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office said Moscow also doubted NATO’s stated aim of protecting the alliance against Iranian rockets following the historic nuclear deal with Tehran and world powers last year that Russia helped to negotiate.

“The situation with Iran has changed dramatically,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

RETALIATION

The readying of the shield also comes as NATO prepares a new deterrent in Poland and the Baltics, following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. In response, Russia is reinforcing its western and southern flanks with three new divisions.

Poland is concerned Russia may retaliate further by announcing the deployment of nuclear weapons to its enclave of Kaliningrad, located between Poland and Lithuania. Russia has stationed anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles there, able to cover huge areas and complicate NATO’s ability to move around.

The Kremlin says the shield’s aim is to neutralize Moscow’s nuclear arsenal long enough for the United States to strike Russia in the event of war. Washington and NATO deny that.

“Missile defense … does not undermine or weaken Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the Deveselu base.

However, Douglas Lute, the United States’ envoy to NATO, said NATO would press ahead with NATO’s biggest modernization since the Cold War. “We are deploying at sea, on the ground and in the air across the eastern flanks of the alliance … to deter any aggressor,” Lute said.

At a cost of billions of dollars, the missile defense umbrella relies on radars to detect a ballistic missile launch into space. Sensors then measure the rocket’s trajectory and destroy it in space before it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. The interceptors can be fired from ships or ground sites.

The Romanian shield, which is modeled on the United States’ so-called Aegis ships, was first assembled in New Jersey and then transferred to the Deveselu base in containers.

While U.S. and NATO officials are adamant that the shield is designed to counter threats from the Middle East and not Russia, they remained vague on whether the radars and interceptors could be reconfigured to defend against Russia in a conflict.

The United States says Russia has ballistic missiles, in breach of a treaty that agreed the two powers must not develop and deploy missiles with a range of 500 km (310.69 miles) to 5,500 km. The United States declared Russia in non-compliance of the treaty in July 2014.

The issue remains sensitive because the United States does not want to give the impression it would be able to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles that were carrying nuclear warheads, which is what Russia fears.

(Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs, Andrew Osborn and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Georgian army begins U.S. led military excersize, angering Russia

Georgian servicemen attend an opening ceremony of U.S. led joint military exercise "Noble Partner 2016" in Vaziani

By Margarita Antidze

TBILISI (Reuters) – The Georgian army began two weeks of military exercises with the United States and Britain on Wednesday, drawing an angry response from former Soviet master Russia which called the war games “a provocative step”.

About 650 soldiers from the United States, 150 from Britain and 500 from Georgia were taking part in the maneuvers, with Washington dispatching an entire mechanized company including eight Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and, for the first time, eight M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks.

Georgia’s Defence Minister Tina Khidasheli said the drills were an important event for the South Caucasus republic.

“This is one of the biggest exercises that our country has ever hosted, this is the biggest number of troops on the ground, and the largest concentration of military equipment,” Khidasheli told Reuters.

But the exercises went down badly in Moscow where the Russian Foreign Ministry last week warned they could destabilize the region, a charge denied by Georgian officials.

“These exercises are not directed against anyone. There is no trace of provocation,” Georgia’s Prime Minister Georgy Kvirikashvili said in a statement.

Russia defeated Georgia in a short war in 2008 over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, and Moscow continues to garrison troops there and to support another breakaway region, Abkhazia.

The exercises were run out of the Vaziani military base near Georgia’s capital Tbilisi.

Russian forces used to be based there until they withdrew at the start of the last decade under the terms of a European arms reduction agreement.

“The importance of these exercises is to improve interoperability between Georgia, the United States and the United Kingdom. … It enables us to prepare Georgia’s contribution to a NATO response force,” Colonel Jeffrey Dickerson, the U.S. director of the exercises, told Reuters.

The United States has spoken favorably of the idea that Georgia might one day join NATO, something Russia firmly opposes.

(Editing by Alexander Winning/Andrew Osborn)

Ex NATO and U.S. defense chiefs warn U.K. against an EU exit

Former NATO secretary-general Fogh Rasmussen speaks during a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev,

LONDON (Reuters) – Former NATO secretary generals warned on Tuesday that a British exit from the European Union would help enemies of the West while ex-U.S. foreign and defense chiefs cautioned that Britain would have less clout outside the bloc.

The double warning comes as the two campaigns for and against Brexit step up their rhetoric about the impact staying or leaving the EU would have on Britain’s security.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday that Britain was safer in the EU while former London mayor Boris Johnson, a member of his Conservative Party, accused him of suggesting World War Three would break out should Britons vote to leave in a referendum on June 23.

The five ex-NATO chiefs – Peter Carrington, Javier Solana, George Robertson, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Anders Fogh Rasmussen – said the imposition of EU sanctions against Russia and Iran, a move led by Britain, showed the importance of the bloc.

“Brexit would undoubtedly lead to a loss of British influence, undermine NATO and give succor to the West’s enemies just when we need to stand should-to-shoulder across the Euro-Atlantic community against common threats,” they wrote in a letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

In a separate letter to the Times, 13 former U.S. secretaries of state and defense and national security advisers from every U.S. administration from Barack Obama’s to Jimmy Carter’s in the 1970s said Britain’s global position would suffer if it left the EU.

“We are concerned that should the UK choose to leave the European Union, the UK’s place and influence in the world would be diminished and Europe would be dangerously weakened,” said the letter signed by, among others, former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Madeleine Albright.

Their warning echoes a similar message from Obama during the U.S. president’s visit to Britain last month.

Those campaigning for Brexit have repeatedly dismissed such warnings, saying membership of NATO, rather than the EU, was key to British security.

In a sign of deepening divisions within Cameron’s own party, Iain Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, said Germany had sabotaged the prime minister’s plans to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU, forcing him to drop his plans to demand an emergency brake on migration.

“They have a de facto veto over everything,” Duncan Smith told Tuesday’s Sun newspaper which accompanied their story with a picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel holding a puppet Cameron.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Russia says will respond to NATO build up in Poland, Baltics

Russian President Putin and Defence Minister Shoigu attend a wreath laying ceremony to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day at the Tomb of the

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will be forced to take retaliatory measures if NATO deploys four extra battalions in Poland and the Baltic states, Interfax news agency quoted a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying on Wednesday.

“This would be a very dangerous build-up of armed forces pretty close to our borders,” Andrei Kelin, a department head at the ministry, said. “I am afraid this would require certain retaliatory measures, which the Russian Defence Ministry is already talking about.”

Russia will form three new military divisions to counter what it believes is the growing strength of The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) near its borders, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov)

Advanced U.S. fighters beefing NATO’s European allies

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter jets conduct approach training in Alaska

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania (Reuters) – Two highly advanced U.S. fighters flew to the Black Sea on Monday for the first time since Washington beefed up military support for NATO’s eastern European allies who say they face aggression from Russia.

President Barack Obama promised in 2014 to bolster the defenses of NATO’s eastern members, unnerved by Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Kremlin’s backing for pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

A U.S. KC-135 refueling plane flew with the two F-22 Raptor fighters from Britain to Romania’s Mihail Kogalniceanu air base on the Black Sea.

“We’re here today to demonstrate our capability to take the F-22 anywhere needed in NATO or across Europe,” said Squadron commander Daniel Lehoski.

“We want to … actually fly the aircraft and train with our NATO allies,” he told a traveling Reuters reporter.

The F-22s are are almost impossible to detect on radar and so advanced that the U.S. Congress has banned Lockheed Martin from selling them abroad. The U.S. has deployed 12 of them at a British base in eastern England.

“The increased size of the 2016 deployment … allows U.S. Forces to assert their presence more widely across the eastern frontier,” said U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Major Sheryll Klinkel.

“We want to be able to operate out of multiple locations. We want to be able to keep our adversary guessing on where we’re going to go next.”

The West is seeking to strengthen the defenses of its eastern flank and reassure eastern European NATO members – such as Poland, the Baltic states and Czech republic which spent decades under Soviet dominance – without provoking the Kremlin by stationing large forces permanently.

But tensions are rising and Russia says the NATO build-up is stoking a dangerous situation.

FACING THE BEAR

Two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea in early April, said U.S. officials, who said the vessel was on routine business near Poland.

A Russian helicopter also made passes around the ship, the USS Donald Cook, taking pictures. The nearest Russian territory was about 70 nautical miles away in its enclave of Kaliningrad, which sits between Lithuania and Poland.

Obama’s European Reassurance Initiative includes greater U.S. participation in training and exercises, deploying U.S. military planners, and more persistent naval deployments on Russia’s doorstep.

The Black Sea is of particular focus as NATO is seeking to counter Russia’s military build-up in Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 after street protests forced a prom-Moscow president to flee.

Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania may expand NATO maritime presence in the Black Sea as part of a broader strategy to deter Russia, NATO’s deputy chief said on Friday.

Russia has threatened to retaliate against any such moves and some NATO members, including Germany, are skeptical of the idea for fear of antagonizing Moscow.

“We are facing NATO military build-up which is completely unjustified. NATO is deploying military assets near Russian borders,” Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, told Reuters earlier this month.

“We are in a very dangerous situation that could lead us to worsened security,” Grushko said.

(Reporting by William James, writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Richard Balmforth)