Nato expected to set up battlegroups to counter Russia

BRUSSELS • Nato defence ministers are expected this week to set in motion a plan that could establish four multinational battlegroups in south-eastern Europe in response to Russia's military build-up in Ukraine, three diplomats said.

Allied ministers meeting today and tomorrow will decide whether to order their military commanders to draw up plans to deploy battlegroups of some 1,000 troops each to Bulgaria and Romania, and possibly to Slovakia and Hungary.

With Nato meeting as the United States warns of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, diplomats told Reuters that ministers are likely to agree to the first step of directing commanders to come up with a detailed plan for the four battlegroups on land.

"There will be a tasking that allows us to escalate but also to de-escalate if Russia pulls back its military," a senior Nato diplomat said, stressing that any new battlegroups would be on top of recent allied offers by Britain, the US and others of ships and planes to reinforce Nato's eastern flank. Ukraine is not a Nato member and the alliance is under no treaty obligation to defend it.

Reinforcements in the Black Sea would show resolve in the strategically important region and in countries such as Hungary and Slovakia that border Ukraine.

Any final decision on deployments would come later, although France and Bulgaria have offered to lead the battlegroups in Romania and Bulgaria, respectively.

The move would be Nato's biggest shift in force posture since it set up its "Enhanced Forward Presence" battlegroups in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland - backed by tanks, air defences and intelligence and surveillance units - in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Any deployments would go against Moscow's security demands for the US-led military alliance to withdraw troops from eastern Europe.

Nato insists that the battlegroup format used in the Baltics is not a permanent stationing of troops, but rather a "persistent" presence of rotating soldiers to serve as a tripwire for a larger response force should Russia invade Nato territory.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has hinted at the possibility of more battlegroups.

On Feb 7, he said: "We are considering more longer-term adjustments to our posture, our presence in the eastern part of the alliance. No final decision has been made on that but there is a process now going on within Nato."

A French presidency official said French troops will deploy to Romania only after a Nato decision and that the designing and arming the battlegroups would still take time because allies must come forward to participate.

"There will be a debate within the North Atlantic Council and we are basically aiming for a deadline of a few months," the official said.

However, with Slovakia and Hungary wary of provoking Russia, diplomats said Nato may avoid a carbon copy of the Baltic battlegroups' model in the south-east.

Instead, Nato could consider a multinational force led by France in Romania that would coordinate allied exercises in eastern Europe and allow troops to flow in and out of the region without establishing a formal presence.

Nato stated in 2008 that it intended for Ukraine to join the alliance eventually, though that remains a remote prospect. Moscow has demanded that Ukraine never be allowed to join Nato and has also called for a rollback of Nato forces from across Eastern Europe. The US and Nato formally rejected those demands but they proposed several areas - including nuclear arms control and limits on military exercises - where they were willing to negotiate.

REUTERS, NYTIMES