Originally Posted by
fitliker
Ironically , there are in the Catholic countries that invaded Orthodox Russia in 1600 and occupied Moscow for 13 years .
That would be ironic. The defender europe 21 describes rather well that those 28000 NATO troops are going to be spread all over Europe, and much of those are located several countries away from russian border (eg croatia, hungary, germany, Netherlands etc). Even down to North Africa. So I have no idea where the figure 40k came from nor the idea that those would be next to russian border.
"
Integrates approximately 28,000 multinational forces from 26 nations to conduct nearly simultaneous operations across more than 30 training areas in 12 countries."
"Demonstrates our ability to serve as a strategic security partner in the western Balkans and Black Sea regions while sustaining our abilities in northern Europe, the Caucasus, Ukraine and Africa."
source: https://www.europeafrica.army.mil/DefenderEurope/
also, considering that Turkey has been a NATO country for more than half a century and they have a rather formidable size army, it sounds a bit lame to state that NATO presence would be uplifted heavily in the Black Sea area due to this exercise.