About 200 Norwegian soldiers are stationed at Rukla camp, about nine miles from the capital Vilnius. There has been a Norwegian presence here since 2017, he writes The online newspaper.
Norwegian soldiers are part of what NATO calls Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) and are here to defend NATO’s eastern flank.
– Putin wanted the opposite of what he got
The supreme leader of the Norwegian soldiers in Lithuania is Major Aleksander Granberg. He believes NATO is stronger than ever and Russian President Vladimir Putin can thank himself for that.
– Without going too far in saying anything about the strategic pitfalls Putin has been walking into, the biggest is probably how close NATO has gotten. The alliance is in a state of flux now and has no plans to budge says Granberg The online newspaper.
While NATO under President Donald Trump existed under more or less constant threats that the United States might leave the alliance, today the tables have been turned.
– Putin wanted the opposite of what he got. It is paradoxical that he gave the alliance a glue, a paste, which we would hardly have managed on our own, says the major.
Russia: No further mobilization plans
Russia said on Tuesday it has no plans to call up more Russian soldiers to fight in the war in Ukraine through a second round of mobilisation.
Vladimir Putin ordered a “partial” mobilization of Russian reservists earlier this year but said the recruitment of 300,000 soldiers was completed by the end of October.
Nonetheless, some in the West have accused Moscow of “covert” mobilization, with reports of Russian prisoners forced to fight in Ukraine.
– I can’t speak on behalf of the Defense Ministry, but there are no discussions in the Kremlin about this, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday when asked about the possibility of a new round of mobilization, according to Sky News.
