News - NATO kicking off its largest military exercise in decades

NATO on Monday will start its biggest military exercises in recent decades. About 90,000 people from all NATO member states and candidate country Sweden will participate in the Steadfast Defender 2024 military exercises. The exercises will continue until the end of May, and will cover the European territory—from Norway to Romania. The scenario of the Steadfast Defender exercises is an allied attack on Russian territory, which will implement Article 5 of the NATO Treaty on Collective Defense, dpa reported. Until now, the Trident Juncture was considered the largest NATO military exercise in recent decades, in which more than 50,000 military personnel participated in 2018. The last such exercises were carried out by NATO in 1988, deploying more than 125,000 soldiers. General Christopher G. Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said that the Steadfast Defender will demonstrate that NATO can carry out complex operations on land, at sea, in the air, in cyberspace, and in space. And according to Robert Peter Bauer, the Chair of the NATO Military Committee, such scale of these military exercises is a demonstration of the alliance's new preparedness.