NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said before the meeting in Brussels on Tuesday that NATO was considering a Romanian offer to provide a brigade, typically around 5,000 troops, which could coordinate alliance training and possibly play a deterrent role, Reuters reports, quoted by Romanian media.
Southern flank allies Bulgaria and Romania are pushing for NATO to expand its maritime presence in the Black Sea, where Russia has a naval fleet, as well as more alliance troops to the region.
Three weeks before a critical NATO summit in Warsaw, the alliance’s defence ministers were to approve deployment of some 4,000 troops which, backed up by rapid reaction forces, could help deter a repeat of Moscow’s show of force in Crimea elsewhere. The battalions will be under NATO command and deployed on a six-to-nine month rotating basis to the former Soviet states of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland.
Moscow has warned on Tuesday Russia will take defence measures if NATO troops are increased in Eastern Europe, local media reported.