WARSAW, Poland, June 7 (UPI) -- NATO launched on Monday the largest war game exercise in eastern Europe since the end of the cold war.
Named Anaconda-2016, the 10-day military exercise has begun in Poland and involves 31,000 troops and thousands of vehicles from 24 countries. The exercise is designed to reassure NATO allies in the region and to be a show of strength in response to recent Russian actions in Eastern Europe.
For the first time since World War II, German tanks will cross Poland, but will be managed by Poland's Lt Gen Marek Tomaszycki. Anaconda-2016 includes 14,000 US troops, 12,000 Polish troops, 800 from Britain and others from non-NATO countries like Finland and Sweden.
Also included in the exercise is an airdrop of 1,130 parachutists -- mostly American and British -- over the northern Polish city of Toruń on Tuesday to build a bridge able to support 300 vehicles over the Vistula river, and a night-time assault exercise with 35 helicopters.
Some defense experts warn that a mishap could provoke a military reaction from Moscow.
"We do not hide our negative attitude to the movement of NATO's military infrastructure towards our borders, to dragging new states into the military activity of the bloc," Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Finland on Monday. "We will invoke Russia's sovereign right to guarantee its security with measures proportionate to the current risks."
