HELSINKI (AP) — NATO kicked off a nearly two-week-long naval exercise in the Baltic Sea on Sunday with more than 7,000 navy, air force and marines from 16 countries, including two that aspire to join the military alliance, Finland and Sweden.
The annual Baltops naval exercise, which began in 1972, is not being conducted in response to any specific threat, but the military alliance said “with the participation of Sweden and Finland, NATO is seizing the opportunity in an unpredictable world to improve the resistance and the strength of their joint forces” together with the two aspiring Nordic nations.
For years, Finland and Sweden had no military alignment at all, until their governments decided to apply for NATO membership in May, as a direct consequence of Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. In recent years, Moscow has repeatedly warned Helsinki and Stockholm not to join the Western military alliance and warned of retaliation if they do.
Before the naval drill, in which 45 ships and 75 aircraft participated, the top US military official said in Sweden, the site of the Baltops 22 exercise, that it was especially important for NATO to show its support for the governments in Helsinki and Stockholm.
“It is important that we, the United States, and the other NATO countries show our solidarity with both Finland and Sweden in this exercise,” US General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a press conference on Saturday. aboard the amphibious warfare ship USS Kearsarge, which is docked in central Stockholm.
Accompanied by the Swedish Prime Minister, Magdalena Andersson, Milley stressed that the Baltic Sea is a body of water of great strategic importance, “one of the great sea routes in the world”.
He stated that, from the perspective of Moscow, the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO will be “very problematic” and will leave Russia in a complicated military position, since the Baltic Sea coastline would be almost completely surrounded by members of the NATO. NATO, except the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and the Russian city of Saint Petersburg and its surroundings.
Turkey, a NATO member country that has maintained good relations with Russia, has opposed Finland and Sweden joining the military alliance, citing their alleged support for a Kurdish group Turkey labels as terrorist.
The NATO chief has tried to resolve the dispute.
The United States had never brought a warship as large as the 257-meter (843-foot) USS Kearsarge to the Swedish capital, where it navigated through narrow passages in the Stockholm archipelago, Milley said.
As close NATO partners, Finland and Sweden have participated in the naval exercise since the mid-1990s.
Baltops 22 is scheduled to finish in the German port of Kiel on June 17.
