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July 31st, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : Some 2,800 troops from host country Georgia, from Ukraine, from NATO members USA, UK, and six other countries have begun a military exercise in the South Caucasus country.
Georgian Prime Minister Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili and other Georgian leaders noted on July 30 that the drills are a substantial step toward Georgia’s goal of one day joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO / OTAN).
Speaking at the opening ceremonies for the exercise Kvirikashvili said “These exercises will help Georgia to get closer to NATO standards and to strengthen stability in the whole region.”
Georgia’s Defense Minister, Levan Izoria, for his part, called the scale of exercises “unprecedented” and said they “make clear the support for Georgia by the NATO member states, especially the U.S.”
NATO has previously expressed the wish to expand its “partnership” with Georgia and plans to have Georgia accede to the Alliance as full member once the country meets political and military requirements for an accession.
At a 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO leaders made a formal pledge that Georgia “will become a NATO member,” but Alliance leaders have moved warily toward that goal. Among the reasons for NATO’s tentative approach are political instability in Georgia, problems pertaining corruption, as well as opposition from the Russian Federation.
Moreover, NATO is somewhat split, meaning that the US and UK are pushing for a more swift NATO expansion while countries like Germany and France would rather not expand NATO on behalf of the US and UK while EU countries are paying the price in terms of tensions between the EU and Russia.
About 1,600 U.S. troops and 800 Georgian soldiers are taking part in the two-week exercises, dubbed Noble Partner. Troops from Britain, Germany, Turkey, Ukraine, Slovenia, and Armenia are also participating, with the United States deploying a mechanized company, including several Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and M1A2 Abrams battle tanks.
It is the third time the exercises have been held in Georgia, a country that has seen a war with neighboring Russia already. The Kremlin recognized Georgia’s breakaway areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries after fighting a five-day war against Tbilisi in 2008, and Russia maintains thousands of troops in the two regions.
In previous years, Moscow warned that the drills could destabilize the region, a notion that Georgia and the United States have dismissed. “This exercise is not directed against any country. It’s about to help Georgia to grow its capacity to interoperate in international operations,” U.S. Ambassador Ian Kelly told reporters, citing missions such as the current one in Afghanistan.
Most independent analysts see the situation as part of post-cold-war geopolitical rivalries between NATO and the Russian-dominated CSTO, with all actors using propaganda and mainstream media to position themselves as peaceful and defensive while denouncing the other party as aggressor or potential aggressor. What disturbs many “actually” independent analysts is that both parties, since the eruption of the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, have their nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to visit Georgia on July 31 after a stop in Estonia to meet with Baltic leaders also concerned about Russia’s intensions in their region. He will meet with U.S. troops on August 1. During his stop in Tallinn, Pence said, “Our message to the Baltic states — my message when we visit Georgia and Montenegro — will be the same: To our allies here in Eastern Europe, we are with you, we stand with you on behalf of freedoms.”
CH/L – nsnbc 31.07.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/07/31/georgia-holds-military-drills-with-us-uk-ukraine-and-others/
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