Us Aircraft Carrier Ukraine - Pentagon officials note that when thousands of Russian marines landed in southern Ukraine on the Sea of Azov coastline on Feb. 25 to target Mariupol, they did so some 43 miles to the east of the city, avoiding having to do an actual contested amphibious assault.
In this perennially neutral country that is suddenly not so neutral, the U.S.S. Kearsarge, which showed up just two weeks after Sweden and Finland announced their intention to seek membership in NATO, is the promise of what that membership would bring: protection if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia turns his anger towards his Nordic neighbors.
Us Aircraft Carrier Ukraine
"There's going to be an almost continuous presence of non-Finnish military units in Finland," Mr. Salonius-Pasternak said. "Are they the key to Finnish defense? From But it probably adds to the calculus of our eastern neighbor.”
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But military experts say that there is a clear expectation that Sweden's and Finland's accession to the alliance means that they would contribute to any maritime chokeholds that NATO might put in place in the Baltic Sea in the event of a war with Russia, a potentially tall order
for the historically non-aligned countries. Along with the rupturing of the notion that the Russian military is an efficient machine, the request by Sweden and Finland to join NATO is perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of Mr.
Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. Instead, Mr. Putin is now facing the prospect of a NATO military alliance that is not just on his doorstep but wrapped around part of the house. Still, the Kearsarge is in the Baltic Sea to take part in exercises meant to teach NATO, Swedish and Finnish troops how to carry out amphibious assaults — storming land that has been seized by, say, Russia.
It is a hugely complex kind of war operation - think the D-Day landing during World War II - that requires coordination between air, land and naval units in what military planners call a "combined arms" mission.
"NATO will continue to take all necessary measures to protect and defend all Allies, including by reinforcing the eastern part of the Alliance," he said. "We will always respond to any deterioration of our security environment, including through strengthening our collective defense."
Earlier on Wednesday, the United States announced it will send nearly 3,000 troops to Poland and Romania to reinforce Eastern European NATO allies in the face of what Washington describes as a Russian threat to invade Ukraine.
The refusal of any NATO country to send actual troops into Ukraine, Nordic officials acknowledged, lays bare the difference between promises of military aid for friendly countries versus that under a Senate-ratified treaty that says an attack on one is an attack on all — NATO's
famous Article 5. "The Russians have their Baltic fleet," General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, but NATO would have its own slew of member countries wrapped around the Baltic Sea once Sweden and Finland join.
In essence, the Baltic would become a NATO lake, save for St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world's largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day.
Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers. But while President Biden has pledged that the United States would help defend Sweden and Finland before they join the alliance, American officials have refused to say specifically what form that help would take, beyond what General Milley characterized Saturday as a "modest increase" in joint
military exercises. Both countries want security assurances, particularly from the United States and other NATO allies, during this interim period while negotiations with Turkey are holding up their formal membership to the military alliance. Sweden's Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told reporters in Washington two weeks ago that the Pentagon had pledged several interim security measures: U.S.
Navy warships steaming in the Baltic Sea, Air Force bombers flying over Scandinavian skies, army forces training together and American specialists helping to thwart any possible Russian cyberattacks. Sweden, meanwhile, shares a maritime border with Russia, as does Finland.
Within a day of Finland's leaders announcing their country should apply for NATO membership, the Kearsarge, named after a Civil War Union sloop famous for sinking Confederate ships, was heading to join Finnish and Swedish navies for training.
The emerging partnership is a two-way street. For NATO, beyond wrapping the alliance all around Russia's western border, the entry of Sweden and Finland allows military planners to reconceptualize all of northern European defenses. In the past, the alliance had to make compromises about where to concentrate troops, headquarters and command and control to provide the best advantage.
It is exactly the kind of military operation that Russia has not managed to pull off yet in Ukraine, and that inability to do so, military experts say, is a big part of why Russia has not managed to take the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa
. The 2004 accession of Latvia and Estonia to NATO stretched its Baltic border with Russia for just over 300 miles; Finland's joining the alliance would add another 830 miles, putting St. Petersburg almost within artillery range.
Tensions between Ukraine and Russia are the highest they've been in years, and the U.S. Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Russia "could at any point launch an attack on Ukraine." But Moscow denies it is gearing up to attack the former Soviet state, arguing instead that NATO are aggressors on Russia's Western flank.
ABOARD U.S.S. KEARSARGE, in the port of Stockholm — If ever there was a potent symbol of how much Russia's invasion of Ukraine has altered Europe, the sight of this enormous warship, bristling with 26 warplanes and 2,400 Marines and sailors, moored among the pleasure craft and tour
boats that ply this port, would certainly be it. But as the Pentagon looks for ways to reassure jittery NATO allies following Russia's deployment of over 100,000 forces near Ukraine, the Truman is a powerful symbol of U.S.
military might and NATO capabilities in a region increasingly on edge. Russia has amassed nearly 100,000 troops in areas near Ukraine's borders, using their presence and live-fire exercises in an apparent attempt to intimidate their neighbor.
Ukraine isn't a member of NATO, but the US has vowed to respond with harsh sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin launches another offensive, similar to his seizure by force of Crimea from the former Soviet republic.
"We constantly look at exercises and training and ask ourselves … do we really need to do it now? Should we speed it up? Should we shorten it?" he said. "There was due consideration given about tensions right now about our exercise posture and after all that consideration and discussion with our NATO allies, the decision was made to move ahead."
Department of Defense Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters the carrier group will "demonstrate NATO's ability to integrate the high-end maritime strike capabilities of an aircraft carrier strike group to support the deterrence and defense of the alliance."
Kirby said the demonstration was not a direct response to the most recent Russian aggressions at the Ukrainian border and had been in the works since 2020. The NATO exercise will last 12 days, starting January 24 and ending on February 4.
The exercise is the first time NATO has commanded a full US carrier strike group since the Cold War, the alliance said in a news release, a sign of the alliance's heightening readiness in the wake of Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
The carrier Truman is accompanied by the US cruiser San Jacinto and the destroyers Bainbridge, Cole, Gravely and Jason Dunham. ABOARD THE USS HARRY S TRUMAN, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. admiral leading the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier strike group would not speculate on Wednesday about what comes next after exercises in the Adriatic Sea end in the coming days.
Navy rules prohibit talking about future operations. "No one in Stockholm can miss that there is this big American ship here in our city," said Micael Byden, the supreme commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, standing on the amphibious assault ship's deck in the shadow of an MV-22 Osprey under
a clear sky on Saturday. "There are more capabilities on this ship," he marveled, "than I could gather in a garrison." In fact, NATO has scheduled many shows of force with Sweden and Finland. "A whole host of exercises that didn't exist on the exercise schedule are there now," said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a military expert with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki.
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