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GEORGIA-NATO-US-RUSSIA
Georgia hosts major joint drills with NATO forces
VAZIANI, Georgia, Aug 1, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Georgia on Wednesday launched
large-scale joint military exercises with NATO forces on the tenth
anniversary of its war with Russia, which strongly opposes Tbilisi’s NATO
membership bid.
Georgia’s Defence Minister Levan Izoria said the two-week drills are “yet
another proof of the growing support which Georgia has from its strategic
partners, NATO’s member states.”
More than 3,000 troops from 13 countries — including the United States,
France, Germany, the UK and Turkey — will take part in the exercises held at
Vasiani and Camp Norio training centres near Tbilisi.
The US has sent some of its Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles, M1A2
Abrams tanks as well as Boeing AH-64 Apache and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk
helicopters across the Black Sea for the drills, which will last until August
15.
“The scenario of the combined multinational exercise includes command and
field training with live fire, engagement of manoeuvre and combat support
elements in defensive and offensive operation,” Georgia’s defence ministry
said in a statement.
Georgia’s bid to join NATO has angered its Soviet-era master Russia and the
confrontation culminated in a brief war over the Moscow-backed separatist
region of South Ossetia in August 2008.
After the war that saw Georgia’s small military routed in just five days,
Moscow recognised South Ossetia and another breakaway province Abkhazia as
independent states and moved in thousands of troops.
At a 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO leaders made a formal pledge that
Georgia “will become a NATO member” but — wary of alienating an increasingly
assertive Russia — have so far refused to put the country on a formal
membership path.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1858 hrs