The massive war exercises - NATO's biggest since the Cold War - began yesterday and involve thousands of troops, aircraft and vehicles from 31 different countries
HUGE NATO war games currently underway will warn Russia that Britain will not let the uninhabited Arctic and its allies be "picked off" one-by-one, a Falklands War hero says.
The exercises - NATO's biggest since the Cold War - began in Norway yesterday and involve thousands of troops, aircraft and vehicles from 31 different countries.
Admiral Lord West today told The Sun Online: "We have done exercises in Norway over a long period of time, because of the days of the Soviet Union we knew that one of the attacks would be to take the northern part of Norway to allow their assets in the peninsula out to sea.
"But doing a larger one now, and making people aware of it, is because Russia is doing a lot of things to destabilise the region.
"I don't think this is like the Cold War. But there has to be some concern about some of the things Putin has done and looking out for the territory of our friends like Norway is very important.
"I think what this is doing is putting down a marker. It's showing that NATO will look after the countries that are a part of it and won't let them get picked off and that we have an interest in the Arctic."
Stretching from the Baltic Sea to Iceland, military manoeuvres are being practised close to Russia, which itself held a huge military drill last month.
It comes as tensions between the West and the Kremlin hit a new low after the Skripal poisonings as well the Russian annexation of Russia and heightened cyber attacks and spycraft across Europe.
Lord West added: "The Russians will certainly monitor it and they will be interested in exactly what is happening. Their reactions in print and things will be that they think this is the sort of thing that escalates tensions and 'don't make us laugh, this is not going to impress us at all'.
"But the reality will be that their military and intelligence agencies will look at it very closely and take note."
US Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, told The Sun Online the manoeuvres would reinforce NATO preparedness.
He said: "It is designed to signal Russia that NATO as an alliance is capable, coherent and fully prepared for any Russian adventurism on the borders.
"It is vital for the United States because it demonstrates the practical alignment of the NATO nations in a pure war fighting capacity.
"Not only does it sharpen the actual operational abilities of the alliance it also creates a sense of unity and cohesion, during a time in which - let’s face it - there is a bit of a growing split across the Atlantic."
However, he dismissed reports in Russia's state-backed media that claim it could lead to WWIII or a nuclear catastrophe.
"I think it is highly unlikely it would lead to open conflict but rather it should serve as a deterrent to Russian behaviour that is unacceptable - ranging from killing former intelligence agents in the United Kingdom, to invading Ukraine."
This comes after American peace activist David Swanson told the drills were "madness" and provocative - statements likely aired by the government-controlled news outlet because they aligned with the Kremlin's stance.
Swanson was reported to have said it was no longer clear what Nato’s true purpose was.
He said these kind of games were great “for building up hostility and maintaining enemies that help sell weapons, but they risk major war... And they risk nuclear war.”
The Nato exercises played out a hypothetical scenario that involved restoring the Scandinavian country's sovereignty after an attack by a "fictitious aggressor".
They involved 50,000 troops, 250 aircraft, and 10,000 tanks, trucks and other land-based vehicles, and were headed by US admiral James Foggo.
Foggo said: "We're here now, in the north, demonstrating our capability to bring a large force to bear on a problem that is an Article 5 problem” - referring to the Nato treaty's promise of mutual defence among member countries.
Dubbed Trident Juncture, the exercise is by far the biggest in Norway since the early 1980s, a sign that the alliance wants to sharpen its defences after years of cost-cutting and far-flung combat missions.
The exercises will continue over the next two weeks, in which troops will be tested against unforgiving environments.
Increasingly concerned about Russia since it annexed Crimea in 2014, Norway has sought to double the number of U.S. Marines receiving training on its soil every year, a move criticized by Moscow.
In a joint op-ed published Thursday in Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden's largest newspapers, the Nordic defence and foreign ministers said they saw "no military threats against the Nordic countries today, but we live in an unpredictable and uncertain time.
"Russia has both shown the will and ability to use military force to achieve strategic goals.
"Cyber-attacks and disinformation are actively used to create divisions between people in Europe as well as in the United States, which in turn challenges democratic institutions and our ability to reach common conclusions," they said.
Last month Russia held its biggest manoeuvres since 1981, called Vostok-2018, mobilising 300,000 troops in a show of force close to China's border which included joint drills with the Chinese and Mongolian armies.
Nato's war games were originally meant to involve 35,000 troops, but that number has grown in recent months and included the late addition of an aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman with some 6,000 personnel.
Nato fears Russia's military build-up in the region could ultimately restrict naval forces' ability to navigate freely, and on October 19 the Truman became the first American aircraft carrier to enter the Arctic Circle since before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Although a solid majority of Norwegians support membership of Nato, whose secretary general is former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, some parties on the left would prefer that the country quit the alliance and form some type of military cooperation arrangement with its Nordic neighbours.
"The effect of this activity will increase the tension between Norway and Russia," Socialist member of parliament Torgeir Knag Fylkesnes said of the exercise, adding that the presence of an aircraft carrier caused particular concern.
"You have to be quite hawkish to view this as something that brings peace in any way," he told Reuters.
Russia was briefed by Nato on the Trident Juncture drill and invited to monitor it, but Moscow is still angered by the exercise.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday: "NATO's military activities near our borders have reached the highest level since the Cold War times.”
Shoigu also noted the war games will be "simulating offensive military action."
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