NATO challenges Russia on military drill numbers
BRUSSELS: NATO members challenged Russia on Thursday over “discrepancies” in Moscow’s account of controversial military exercises last month, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said.
The Zapad drills that Moscow staged jointly with Belarus on NATO’s eastern flank caused concern in Poland and the Baltic states due to their size and over Moscow’s intentions.
Zapad is Russian for “west” and Western nations feared the exercises closely resembled a rehearsal for war with NATO.
“There is a discrepancy between what Russia briefed before the exercise... and the actual numbers and the scale and the scope of the exercise,” Stoltenberg told reporters after Thursday’s meeting of the NATORussia Council (NRC).
“The number of troops participating in the exercise significantly exceeded the number announced before the exercise,” he added, saying the 29-nation bloc had confronted the Russian envoy to the alliance, Alexander Grushko, over the issue.
NATO members have repeatedly criticized Moscow for its lack of transparency over the military maneuvers.
Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of US ground forces in Europe, said earlier this month that the Kremlin had split up the Zapad drills into smaller events to flout international agreements on reporting such exercises.
Hodges said he believed more than 40,000 troops took part, though the Kremlin insists the figure was just 12,700 — below the 13,000 threshold beyond which foreign observers can carry out inspections, according to international protocols.