As the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) refocuses on its eastern borders after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the US is quietly deploying more troops to train special forces in former Soviet bloc states anxious about Moscow’s intentions.
Major exercises began last month in Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia involving several hundred personnel from US special forces, the US European Command (Eucom) said.
Long-term plans include further training drills that will consistently keep about 100 US elite troops on the ground at any one time in Nato states close to Russia, with teams working in several countries, US officials said.
The events in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-speaking insurgents using sophisticated weapons threaten to split the country, have put the whole former Soviet bloc region on alert and eager for Nato reassurance.
Eucom says its Special Operations Command Europe (Soceur) increased the size and scope of its planned exercises after Ukraine flared into violence, reinforcing Washington’s message to Moscow that it would stand by its allies.
“Training with our partners in their home countries is something that we have always done,” said Soceur spokesman Lt-Col Nick Sternberg. “The difference is that now we will maintain a (persistent) Special Operations Forces presence in theatre along the eastern front of Nato on this training mission,” he said.
Troops will not be permanently based in any one country in Eastern Europe, nor will they have any permanent bases there.
The exercises have involved practising house-to-house fighting, mock raids in assault boats and co-ordinating parachute drops and air strikes, the Soceur Facebook page shows.
Highly trained and equipped with advanced communications equipment and weapons, special forces are often used in counterterrorism or reconnaissance operations. They can infiltrate enemy lines to tie down much larger numbers of opposition troops.
US special forces saw their numbers more than double, their budget triple and their deployments quadruple in the decade after the September 11 2001 al-Qaeda attacks.
The US aim is to help Eastern Europe’s militaries build elite units along the lines of the US Navy Seals, Delta Force or Britain’s Special Air Service.
“They are still not up to US, British or French capabilities, but some of the newer Nato special forces are improving very quickly,” said Linda Robinson, an expert in special forces at the Rand Corporation think-tank.
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