BERLIN (Sputnik) — On Thursday, the German company Optronic HR confirmed recruiting Russian speakers for upcoming NATO drills involving US troops. A US army representative then told Sputnik the war games were not rehearsals for specific combat scenarios but were designed to train troops to deal with civilians from different countries while executing various assignments.
"This issue should not be addressed to me, this is the question to foreign military units staying on the German land… This is not our topic," German Defense Ministry spokesman Jens Flosdorff said at a briefing answering the question about the participation of Russian-speaking extras at the upcoming exercise.
The relevant job ad is still up on the Optronic HR website us-statisten.de and states that the extras will represent the local population of a crisis-hit region in order for NATO troops to prepare for missions abroad. The extras are expected to have a basic knowledge of English, German, Polish or Czech aside from Russian. They will wear infrared detectors to determine if they would have been hit by soldiers on battlefield.
