The combat phase of the Trident Juncture 2018 military exercises, which Moscow considers “anti-Russian” and “aggressive”, is taking place off the coast of Norway.. These are the largest maneuvers since the end of the Cold War that the North Atlantic Alliance is carrying out, covering the region from the waters of Iceland to the Baltic Sea..

The teachings, the provisional name of which in the Russian media is translated as "Single Tizub 2018", are held in Norway, in the Baltic Sea and the North Atlantic, as well as in the airspace of Sweden and Finland. All 29 member countries of NATO are taking part in them, as well as units of some of the Alliance’s partner countries.. In particular, Sweden, Finland, Georgia, Jordan and Ukraine.

The United States is represented by the most powerful military grouping - 14 thousand troops. As part of the exercise, for the first time in the last 30 years, a group of US Navy ships led by the nuclear aircraft carrier "Harry Truman" entered the Arctic Circle.

NATO insists Trident Junctures are exclusively defensive in nature.. “The exercises will test our readiness to restore the sovereignty of an ally, in this case, Norway, after an act of armed aggression. The exercises send a clear signal to any potential adversary that NATO does not seek confrontation, but is ready to defend all allies from any threat, ”Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on the eve.

Representatives of other countries participating in the exercises, both NATO members and alliance partners, spoke in the same vein.. Finnish Minister of Defense Jussi Niinisto said the day before: “I don’t think that these exercises should worry Russia, on the contrary, they send a powerful signal that NATO is a defensive alliance that protects its own, therefore it’s useless to attack the country that belongs to it” his words are newspaper Iltalehti. In his speech on the occasion of the arrival of German troops, tanks and other equipment to participate in the Trident Juncture maneuvers, Norway’s Minister of Defense Frank Bakke-Jensen stated that the situation in the region and the world had changed in a fundamental way.. "We need to tackle the old NATO mission - providing security in the North Atlantic and protecting communication lines and supply routes in the Atlantic. This is exactly what we are working on now - the movement of a large number of troops, vehicles and ships ". In turn, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said that Trident Junctures are anti-Russian:" There is no doubt that they (the teachings) are anti-Russian orientation, and we must also take this into account in our military planning. ”.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova echoed him, stating that “the scenarios of the exercises and other activities of NATO members for the massive strengthening of the military infrastructure in the Baltic States, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania clearly indicate their anti-Russian orientation.

Earlier, Moscow called the exercises aggressive, but there are observers from the Russian Defense Ministry..

It is worth noting that Trident Junctе are held after the most large-scale military exercises Vostok-2018 took place in the Far East in September of this year, in which 300 thousand took part.. military personnel, 36 thousand.

tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, more than 1000 aircraft and helicopters and about 100 ships, as well as military contingents of China and Mongolia.

Last autumn, on the territory of Belarus and Russia, a joint strategic exercise "West-2017" was held, in which, according to official data, up to 13 thousand people took part. military personnel. The countries - members of NATO and other European countries then criticized the organizers, accusing them of underreporting the number of military personnel involved in order to limit the powers of the observers.