Ukraine Gives Urgency to Giant NATO Cold-Weather Exercise
Russia is surely watching the 29-country wargame closely.
ELISABETH BRAW | MARCH 31, 2022
NATO’s massive Cold Response 2022 was supposed to distinguish itself in one way: it’s a massive—30,000-troop—cold-weather exercise involving nearly all of NATO’s member states. But since it began in Norway last week, Cold Response 2022 has also distinguished itself in two unpredicted ways: four U.S. Marines have lost their lives in an accident, and the exercise is taking place amid a brutal war in the neighborhood.
“We’ve been planning this exercise for a long time,” Lt. Gen. Yngve Odlo, the chief of the Norwegian Armed Forces’ operative headquarters, told me. “We wanted to host the exercise, so we invited the other countries and developed the scenario: reinforcement of Norway in a crisis situation, with activities in all domains—sea, land, air.” Indeed, Cold Response 2022 was conceived long before Russia invaded Ukraine, and was announced on June 21 last year. Twenty-seven NATO member states are participating, as are NATO partners Sweden and Finland, and the more than 30,000 people involved include some 14,000 ground troops, 8,000 sailors and navy troops, and 8,000 air force troops and staff officers. The exercise, which practices NATO’s ability to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to the High North, also features some 220 aircraft and more than 50 vessels.
But the coincidence that Cold Response has ended up taking place alongside a war in Europe makes it unique in post-World War II history—and uniquely useful.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/03/ukraine-gives-urgency-giant-nato-cold-weather-exercise/363877/
