Säufer schrieb am 03.04.2024 09:53:
ihre Truppen in die Ukraine zu schicken - sammt Kriegsgerät.
Die baltischen Staaten waren nicht Bestandteil des ursprünglichen KSE-Vertrags und sind weder diesem noch dem folgenden A-KSE Vertrag beigetreten.
Damit könnten die baltischen Staaten selbst ein riesiges eigenes Militär an der russischen Grenze stationieren, um Russland zumindest konventionell abzuschrecken.
Ein Schelm würde jetzt natürlich die Frage stellen, warum die baltischen Staaten nicht längst diese Chance ergriffen und ein solches Militär stationiert haben, wo sie sich doch ständig von Russland bedroht fühlen...
Immerhin fühlte man sich so bedroht, dass man sofort nach dem Beitritt Luftpatrouillen an der russichen Grenze von der NATO eingerichten ließ:
The fighter jets that landed this week at the airfield northwest of here do not pose much of a threat, but their arrival at what was once one of the Soviet Union's largest bases underlined in bold the new borders being drawn between Europe and Russia.
The jets -- four Belgian F-16's supported by 100 Belgian, Danish and Norwegian troops -- have come to police the skies over the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, former Soviet republics that officially joined NATO on Monday along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The operation is purely defensive, NATO officials and military commanders here say, but the territory being patrolled abuts some 500 miles of Russia's western frontier, including the isolated enclave of Kaliningrad.
To Russia, at least, the meaning is clear: the alliance still views it as a potential enemy rather than a partner.
While Russia has resigned itself to NATO's expansion, albeit grudgingly, the reality of NATO forces being deployed in the Baltics -- on short notice -- has deeply unsettled and angered its politicians and commanders, prompting some of the sharpest criticism of the alliance since its war against Serbia in 1999.
Russia's lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on Wednesday denouncing NATO's expansion generally and the deployment of the F-16's specifically.
(...)
None possess significant military forces -- Lithuania's entire armed forces total 13,000 troops, smaller than some United States Army divisions. NATO in fact urged them not to invest heavily to bolster their navies and air forces but to rely instead on collective defense, particularly for air cover. Instead, the three countries have invested in modernizing their ground forces and focusing on niche fields like special operations.Lithuania, whose air force has only a handful of trainer jets and helicopters, has welcomed the offer, since neither it nor the other Baltic states had sufficient forces to patrol their skies.
(...)
He, like Lithuanian officials, emphasized that the patrols were not directed against the Russians, but such assurances have done little to ease Russia's strong displeasure with what it views as a provocation.When NATO sent an AWACS reconnaissance aircraft to Rumbula Airfield in Latvia on Feb. 23 and then to Siauliai two days later on what NATO called a demonstration flight, Russian officials angrily protested that the plane's sophisticated radar equipment could peer deep into European Russia.
NATO's expansion may not amount to a new containment of Russia, as many in Russia fear, but it has nonetheless created an armed divide from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea that has left Russia on the other side.
(...)
''In admitting the Baltic states and arranging guarantees for their security, many in NATO apparently proceeded from previous perceptions that a war is possible in Europe,'' the spokesman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, Aleksandr V. Yakovenko, said on Monday.He and other officials have complained in particular that Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovenia are not covered by the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a cold-war-era agreement that imposed limits on tanks, aircraft and other military equipment.
They did not exist as independent states when the treaty was negotiated, but in Russia's view the failure to include them leaves open the possibility of a significant military buildup on its borders. Russian politicians and commanders have vowed to increase their forces in Kaliningrad and northwestern Russian in response.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/world/as-nato-finally-arrives-on-its-border-russia-grumbles.html