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NATO Builds Largest Europe Base Near Black Sea

NewsWeek,  Mar 18, 2024

Romania has now begun construction of what will eventually be the NATO alliance’s largest European military base, as the transatlantic bloc seeks to bolster its capabilities in the Black Sea region with an eye on Russian activity there.

The $2.7 billion project will expand the Romanian Air Force 57th Air Base Mihail Kogălniceanu, which is located close to the Black Sea port city of Constanța. The new facility will have a perimeter of almost 20 miles, cover around 11 square miles, and will be home to some 10,000 NATO personnel and their families.

Romania has long been a key hub for NATO operations in the Black Sea region. Thousands of U.S. troops have cycled through the country on training and security missions since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine. American combat and surveillance aircraft regularly operate from there as part of NATO’s policing operations………………………….

NATO began building its network of four Enhanced Forward Presence multinational battlegroups in the Baltic region following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Comment: 2014 was the year of the US coup in Ukraine.

After the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the alliance reinforced those missions and established four additional battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

France is the framework nation for the Romanian battlegroup, with Belgium, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, and the U.S. all contributing forces.

Bucharest is looking towards closer cooperation with its NATO allies — and the U.S. in particular — as the Black Sea becomes an increasingly fraught theater of confrontation between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Moscow and its Western rivals.

“Romania has already established itself as an anchor of the eastern flank of NATO and the EU,” Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu told Newsweek in June. https://www.newsweek.com/nato-builds-largest-europe-base-black-sea-romania-1880210

March 22, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, weapons and war