Disinfo: Military exercise Defender Europe 2020 is an act of war against Russia

Summary

Though transferring troops to different parts of Europe may seem quite harmless, from a military perspective it actually means establishing a battle force for an offensive or for the creation of a defensive line. Nobody should be deceived by terms such as “transportation”, “logistics” and “testing bridges and roads”. Defender Europe 2020 is an exercise of strategic defence and its target is to counter a “Russian invasion”. And since there are no hints that Moscow is attempting to ever invade Europe, it is clear that those exercises are anti-Russian by nature and are another planned provocation against Russia.

Disproof

Defender Europe 2020 is not aimed against Russia and is defensive in nature. NATO’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg affirmed that it is not directed against any particular country. Its purpose is to practice the rapid deployment of large-scale forces across the Atlantic into Europe, demonstrating the US military’s ability to quickly send a massive contingent to support NATO and respond to any crisis.

These claims are part of a recurrent Kremlin-led narrative to portray NATO and Western armies as aggressive forces against Russia. This particular article is a translation from an op-ed in RT English, but while the original article mentioned “war against Russia role-plays” in its headline, the version in NewsFront Spanish doubled down the narrative as “war against Russia”. You can see other examples of disinformation about NATO in our database, such as its never-ending provocations, its attempts to block Moscow in its sphere of influence, the Alliance's permanent targeting of Russia and Belarus, its role as a US subjugation tool for other countries and its unreliability to defend its members or its plans to continue attacking other countries.

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es.news-front.info (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 184
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 04/02/2020
  • Outlet language(s) Spanish
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: US, Russia
  • Keywords: Military exercise, War preparation, Anti-Russian, Provocation, Encircling Russia, NATO
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