British troops to defend Baltics against Russia in new Nato mission
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Hundreds of British troops are to be deployed to eastern Europe, the Defence Secretary announced, under a major Nato operation to deter any Russian aggression.
A battalion of five hundred soldiers is to be deployed to Estonia, supported by a company each from Denmark and France.
The highly-mobile British-led battle group will act a trip-wire, in a move intended to warn Moscow that any incursion into the Baltic state would trigger a full response from the 28-member alliance.
Similar deployments are planned across the Russian frontier, led by the German Bundeswehr in Lithuania, the United States in Poland and Canada in Latvia.
Around 150-200 British troops will be deployed to Poland to train local forces.
Military planners are increasingly unnerved by Russian behaviour in the region, including the buzzing of US ships by Su24 jets in the Baltic Sea.
“It should send a very strong signal of unity and our determination to defend the Baltic states and Poland in the face of continued Russian aggression,” said Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary.
In the event of a military emergency, the British taskforce could be supported by a Nato high-readiness "spearhead" brigade of 5,000 men.
“They won’t be left out to dry. They can be reinforced very rapidly,” Mr Fallon said.
“We have implemented the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War,” said Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato Secretary General.
The strategy – known as “enhanced forward presence” - is a far lighter footprint than in the Cold War, when the United States alone had 300,000 troops stationed in Europe. Poland wants a much firmer response.
Moscow, which claims to be the victim of Nato “encirclement”, responded by announcing a snap inspection of its armed forces.
General Sir Nick Carter, head of the Army, told a Defence Select Committee yesterday that Britain was in a “era of constant competition” with Russia.
He said: “I think the boundaries between peace and war are now much more blurred than they once were.”
A British Army source said: “There’s been a growing feeling in the past 12 months that we can’t just ignore Russia. There’s a lot of thought going into the difference between deterrence and provocation.
“Russia feels like it’s being encircled and in the wake of the Cold War you can see where that comes from. But at the same time everyone thinks Russia was only able to annex Crimea and do what it did in Ukraine because it felt there was no cost or consequence. We have to change that."
The Treasury claims a Brexit would trigger a recession, and Mr Fallon said that would imply cuts to defence spending, even if the Nato target of two per cent of GDP were protected.
"Of course the percentage would be the same but the spending figure would be smaller, yes,” he told the Telegraph.
"Spending on pensions, all sorts of public services, including defence could be at risk. That really matters here. This is a very dangerous moment.”
"No country has ever left either Nato or the EU which are the twin pillars of our security - Nato with military might and the European Union with the economic muscle and the legal power to enforce sanctions.
"For a major country like Britain to leave either of those partnership would weaken the collective security of the west. I would hope voters think very, very hard about the real risks to our security of voting to leave."
© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2016
