https://sputnikglobe.com/20230319/nato-reportedly-mulling-300000-strong-force-on-russias-borders-amid-fast-dwindling-war-chests-1108553413.html

NATO Reportedly Mulling 300,000-Strong Force on Russia's Borders Amid Fast-Dwindling War Chests

NATO Reportedly Mulling 300,000-Strong Force on Russia's Borders Amid Fast-Dwindling War Chests

Sputnik International

NATO is reportedly mulling deploying a 300,000-strong force on Russia's borders, despite dwindling war chests.

2023-03-19T07:42+0000

2023-03-19T07:42+0000

2023-04-20T12:12+0000

military

nato

russia

volodymyr zelensky

ukraine crisis

russia-nato showdown

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NATO is seriously considering deploying a 300,000-strong force along Russia’s borders, but these ambitious aspirations may turn into a challenging stress-test for the alliance’s members, according to a US report. As the US and its allies continue to ramp up their hefty military assistance to Ukraine, meeting NATO's needs may come up against resistance from European capitals. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been constantly clamoring for more military support from the so-called collective West, and Kiev's voracious appetite for arms has already resulted in fast-depleting supplies of weapons and munition stockpiles in Europe's NATO-states.NATO may have to resort to a good deal of pressuring, coordinating and coaxing if it wants its new military plans to come to fruition, said the report.For its plans on the eastern flanks to materialize, NATO will face the daunting task of convincing individual countries on the European continent to contribute everything from extensive amounts of costly weapons, equipment and ammunition, to soldiers, and training efforts. But considering how low many war chests of NATO members have been running on munitions alone, there is reportedly a risk that not all allies will be up to the task. The need to contribute ever more weapons stockpiles and troops to NATO’s new plans may come at too great a cost for many countries already worried about their own defense stockpiles.As Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, launched in February 2022, continues, Kiev regime's forces are running down stockpiles of artillery shells gleaned from the West at lightning pace. Accordingly, both the US and EU are brainstorming how to source more weapons quickly to aid the restocking of supplies, but procurement is going to be a spanner in the works of NATO’s ambitious plans, added the report.This spring, the alliance’s military leaders will be submitting their updated regional defense, according to the US media report. NATO will be pushing for significantly “more troops” and especially more forces at “readiness” to supposedly counter Russia, a senior NATO military official was cited as saying.The report goes on to clarify what is meant by this “readiness". The so-called first tier of this process may presuppose an estimated 100,000 soldiers from Poland, Norway and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), ready to “move within 10 days,” Heinrich Brauß, a former NATO assistant secretary-general for defense policy and force planning was cited as saying. Afterwards, a second tier of troops would be expected to deploy from countries like Germany “in between 10 and 30 days”.But though that may seem quite doable on paper, in effect the process would present a massive challenge, as it would require quickly redeploying lots of people and equipment, along with the required training, and, of course, sizeable costs. Furthermore, for all of these plans to materialize, many allies’ militaries will need to boost their own recruitment, hike up defense spending, and all told, everyone involved would be forced to “procure more weapons, ammunition and equipment”. Even finding companies that are able to fast-track the production of good-quality bullets would be a challenge.Even NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who recently emphasized that allies have boosted production in recent months, taking into consideration new requirements for ammunition stockpiles, was quoted as saying this month:“The current rate of consumption compared with the current rate of production of ammunition… is not sustainable.”Looking ahead, once NATO has prepared the blueprints for its ambitious military plans, its allies will be pressured to cough up readily available troops, planes, ships and tanks. And whether they are ready to gear up to the challenge remains to be seen. Leaders of the alliance’s 30 member countries are set to meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their summit on 11 and 12 July 2023.But there is also another contentious and divisive issue involved - defense investments. Whereas back in 2014 NATO leaders pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense within a decade, at the Vilnius summit the leaders will be forced to contemplate a new target.“Two percent as floor” is the “center of gravity” at present, but "2 percent would not be enough for everybody,” one senior NATO official was quoted as cautioning.The allies' response to all these demands will show whether NATO will succeed in matching its ambitions to reality, the report concluded.As NATO reportedly mulls edging its forces ever closer to Russia's borders, it is worth recalling that Moscow has persistently sought to warn the alliance about the implications of its continued eastward expansion. Despite promises famously made in February 1990, when US Secretary of State James Baker vowed to the Soviet Union that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” of a reunified Germany, the Clinton administration broke the pledge in the mid-Nineties. NATO embarked upon a push to incorporate more and more Eastern European members into the bloc, and has since swallowed up more than a dozen countries in Eastern Europe, rejecting a Russian request for a halt to its expansion.In December 2021, Russian Foreign Ministry officials handed two draft proposals on security guarantees between Russia, the US and NATO to US diplomats in Moscow, and published them in full on the ministry's website shortly after. Moscow had outlined the "red lines" which it believed should not be crossed. The document called on Washington to pledge not to continue NATO's eastward expansion, and to refrain from cooperating militarily with post-Soviet states (except those which are already members of the alliance). It similarly called for Ukraine's incorporation into the bloc to be forbidden. However, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg rejected the stipulation on Ukraine's status, saying that the alliance stands with Kiev's "right to choose its own path", and suggesting that the alliance never promised not to expand.Furthermore, after the escalation of the security crisis in the Donbas after the US-sponsored coup in Kiev in February 2014, Kiev's authorities scrapped the notion of neutrality, as the country’s constitution was amended to include the “strategic course” of joining the EU and the Western military bloc. In February 2022, days before Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference, announcing that Ukraine may revoke its non-nuclear weapons status. Shortly after, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to Zelensky’s comments, saying Moscow would consider even attempts to create a tactical nuclear device by a neighbor that questions Russia’s territorial integrity as a “strategic threat” to Russia.As for Moscow, ever since its special military operation in Ukraine prompted the so-called collective West to start drumming up military support for the Kiev regime, it repeatedly warned French, German, and other European leaders of the folly of their anti-Russia policy, which only fed the flames of the conflict. Moscow warned that weapons support for Kiev risks turning the Russia-NATO “proxy conflict” in Ukraine into a global conflagration.

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nato, 300,000-strong force, on russia's borders, dwindling war chests, supplying weapons to ukraine, russia's special military operation in ukraine, kiev regime, depleted stockpiles, ammunition, shells, procurement, fast-depleating supplies of weapons and munition stockpiles in european nato-states.