In response to the rising threat of a Russian military invasion of Ukraine, NATO forces in the region have begun mobilizing.
Spain announced Thursday that two of its warships were en route to the Black Sea, the body of water that borders southern Ukraine, to partake in military exercises originally planned for later this year. Spain may also send fighter jets to Bulgaria, where the Dutch government is sending F-35s, while, according to military analyst Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, France hopes to lead an Enhanced Forward Presence battalion of fighters in Romania.
“Putin’s beef with NATO is real,” Evelyn Farkas, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, told Yahoo News. “He wants a sphere of influence, and he wants to ensure that there are no democratic powers tempting the countries that he believes should be in Russia’s sphere of influence to join NATO or the European Union.”
Russia has been complaining about the military alliance, whose members now number 30, pretty much ever since, all the more since NATO defensive troops and military installations are positioned at its borders in five of those countries. Poland and Romania in particular have Aegis Ashore weapons systems, which Russia fears could be converted to launch nuclear weapons.
Relatives of Ukrainian servicemen who died during the defense of Donetsk Airport hug next to a memory wall in Kyiv on Friday.