Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will leave Sunday for a week of meetings in Germany, Estonia and Belgium to discuss NATO’s changed security outlook in the context of the new aggressive posturing of Russia.
In Estonia, Carter will sit down with the defense ministers of that East European nation, and those from Latvia and Lithuania, to “discuss the new security environment, including the challenges from Russia.”
While Carter is in Estonia, he will board the amphibious landing dock ship the USS San Antonio, which just finished leading the largest-ever multinational Baltic Sea exercises. The annual exercises involved 49 warships and 60 aircraft from 11 nations and more than 5,000 personnel, and was significantly larger this year as a show of force against Russia’s military actions in Ukraine.
During the exercises, which finished this week, Russia aggressively buzzed the U.S. and coalition ships and aircraft multiple times. Russia was a participant in the exercises until 2013.
Later in the week, Carter is scheduled to stop in Belgium for the annual NATO Defense Ministerial, where he will discuss “U.S. commitments to the NATO alliance,” the Pentagon said.
