Montenegro to Join NATO Missions on Russian Border

Montenegro will deploy troops in Poland and Latvia by 2019 at the latest in support of NATO battle formations on the border with Russia, according to a Defence Ministry document, which BIRN has obtained.

It said Montenegro will send troops to Latvia to join the Slovenian Army battalion which has been there since 2017, with Canada as the lead country in the operation.

By the beginning of 2019, Montenegro will also send two logistics officers to join the NATO Battle Group in Poland.

According to the document, Montenegrin officers will be part of a unit deployed by the National Guard of the US State of Maine, which has been in partnership with Montenegro since 2007.

Both the Latvia and Poland operations were set up as a part of NATO's efforts to tighten its presence on the alliance's eastern borders with Russia.

NATO has four multinational battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland totalling approximately 4,500 troops, operational since 2017.

Allied leaders decided at the Warsaw Summit in 2016 to enhance NATO's military presence in the eastern sector of the alliance, the so-called the Eastern Flank, in response to a "changed security environment" following the eruption of conflict in Ukraine. 

NATO said the four battlegroups were one of its responses to "Russia's use of force against its neighbours and its military build-up in the Baltic region and beyond".

Canada leads the battlegroup in Latvia, with contributions by Albania, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Spain. The US leads the battlegroup in Poland, with contributions by Romania and the UK.

According to BIRN's sources from the Defence Ministry, the plan to join NATO troops in Latvia and Poland will be presented at a meeting of Montenegro's Defence...

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