NATO to step up security measures

  • 2014-04-22
  • From wire reports, TALLINN

The Estonian Defense Ministry says that neither NATO nor U.S. leadership have informed it of a decision to send 150 infantry soldiers to Estonia, as claimed in the Friday, April 18 issue of The New York Times, reports Postimees Online.

The New York Times wrote on Friday that the United States plans to carry out small ground-force exercises in Poland and Estonia in an attempt to reassure NATO’s Eastern European members worried about Russia’s military operations in and near Ukraine. The exercise in Poland, which is expected to be announced next week, would involve a United States Army company and would last about two weeks, officials said.

A company consists of about 150 soldiers. The exercise in Estonia would be similar, said a Western official who declined to be identified because he was talking about internal planning, the newspaper wrote.

"NATO and the leadership of the United States of America haven’t announced such a decision so far and the information published in the press is based on anonymous sources," said Estonian Defense Ministry representative Artur Jugaste.

Jugaste said that last week, NATO’s North Atlantic Council approved a package of deterrence measures that decisively increases the presence of the alliance in the Baltic States on land, sea and in the air.