Earlier, NATO's supreme allied commander said that the US military was putting Russia “on notice” by deploying a carrier battle group to Norway for massive alliance drills later this month.
Dutch Marine Corps director of operations Gen Jeff Mac Mootry has accused the Russian military of trying to provoke NATO marines operating in the Arctic Circle.
“What we see is there is an increasing interest of Russian naval vessels when we exercise,” he said, speaking to the Telegraph at a briefing in Rotterdam.
“For example, when we do launching exercises as part of our ballistic missile defense program, we see more Russian ships than normally and they come closer to us than in past decades. They clearly want to make their presence visible,” Mac Mootry explained.
The Dutch general also complained about Russian fighter planes flying “closer over our warships just to make their presence known, you could almost call it, in a provocative way.”
According to Mac Mootry, NATO's encounters with Russian forces near Norway are part of a wider “Cold War 3.0.” The senior officer did not specify why the present tensions constitute a “Cold War 3.0” rather than the more traditional description of strained Russia-West relations as a ‘Cold War 2.0.'
Approximately 400 British marines have been training with their Dutch counterparts in Norway as part of a joint deployment in the region.
The UK has plans to set up a…
