NATO's largest military drills since Cold War to be based on Russia's attack scenario - media

Bild writes about it.

The scenario of the exercise is a Russian attack on the territory of the allies, which leads to the application of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. According to it, an armed attack on one or more allies is considered an attack on all.

The exercise will test, in particular, the warning and deployment of national and multinational ground forces.

The exercises are to be organized in Northern Norway, and Lithuania and Hungary are mentioned as other planned locations for the maneuvers. The Bundeswehr will provide 12,000 soldiers, as well as 3,000 vehicles and 30 aircraft. The UK is providing an aircraft carrier and several F-35 fighters, the newspaper writes.

It is planned to be the largest exercise since the end of the Cold War. The last biggest NATO maneuvers took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1988. About 125,000 soldiers were involved then.

• On January 15, Bild reported that Germany has prepared a scenario in case Ukraine loses the war.  Mitko Müller, a spokesman for the German Ministry of Defense, said he could not comment on the Bild article. "In principle, I can neither confirm nor deny this media report," he said. Müller stressed that Germany's military leadership takes the threat seriously and is conducting various exercises to improve the army's combat readiness. At the same time, NATO said that "Bild received a training scenario, which is an imaginary situation to test military capabilities in a particular area."