WARSAW, Poland – Leaders in most Eastern European nations – including Estonia and Romania – are just short of jubilant after NATO created a rapid-reaction “spearhead” force to protect the region from Russian bullying. They have long sought a commitment to allay their fears, especially following Russia’s recent aggression in Ukraine.
But not all share in the joy. Some who spent decades under the Soviet yoke – politicians and ordinary people – think that the move could enrage Moscow and undermine the sense of security they have felt since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the expansion of NATO in the 1990s.
The region’s long-standing distrust of Russia became more acute after Russia’s annexation of the Crimea Peninsula and its role in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Poland, the region’s largest country and most potent speaker, has pushed for a large, permanent deployment of at least two divisions of NATO troops on its territory as a deterrent to any such activity in Russia’s west.
The NATO summit in Newport, Wales, last week settled for less, after Germany and some other major members insisted they want to keep a dialogue open with Moscow. The summit decided on a new, rapid-reaction force of some 5,000 troops, a “spearhead” ready to deploy to any conflict zone in a matter of hours. The command and key infrastructure is to be located near the Russian border. In Poland, many presume.
“We would have liked more but let’s be happy with the decisions taken in Newport,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. “We still have a lot of work to do to make this quantitative change satisfying.”
But, he insisted: “This signal is very strong and our Eastern neighbor (Russia) cannot ignore it.”
As the summit deliberated Friday, Ukraine, Russia and the Kremlin-backed separatists signed a cease-fire and the months-long fighting in Eastern Ukraine seemed to be held back.
On his way home from Newport, Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski made a stop at a NATO-linked multinational force in Szczecin, in northwestern Poland, that is to be strengthened under the new strategy. Some speculate Szczecin may host the command of the “spearhead.”
Poland’s former ambassador to NATO, Jerzy Maria Nowak, believes that NATO’s decisions may be a comfort for some, but “for Russia, they may be a provocation and a violation of the agreements” it has with NATO.
Valerica Stefanescu who runs a small café on the sea front in the resort of Mamaia said everyone was “worried about the situation in Ukraine, who wouldn’t be?”
“But we don’t want to see more military presence on the Black Sea; we’d feel like it was war,” she said.
Nearby, retired mechanical engineer, Niculae Oprea drew an even gloomier picture: “(Romanian President Traian Basescu) will get us into a war; we are too small compared to Putin, who didn’t even bat an eyelid with Crimea. The sanctions aren’t hurting him. You saw how he placed an embargo, and now you have fruit and vegetables rotting in Europe.
“The Russian bear won’t let us off lightly, you’ll see. He will turn off the gas, and we will go to Russia crying and on our knees.”
Associated Press writers Alison Mutler in Bucharest and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.
Apparent shelling heard outside Ukrainian port
KIEV, Ukraine – Witnesses in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol reported sustained explosions outside the city and a volunteer battalion of Ukrainian fighters says Grad rockets were fired at its positions late Saturday, little more than a day after Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist rebels signed a cease-fire following more than four months of fighting in the country’s east. The cease-fire had appeared to largely been holding during much of the day.
But late Saturday, witnesses in Mariupol told The Associated Press by telephone that heavy explosions were coming from the city’s eastern outskirts, where Ukrainian troops retain defensive lines against the rebels. Mariupol is a port city of about half a million on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
