Three thousand soldiers, one thousand one hundred land vehicles, twenty planes, one ship: it is the Italian contingent deployed on the “eastern flank of NATO”, the one that finds itself on the front line in the increasingly heated confrontation with Russia. The commitment of the armed forces in the world was presented today in Parliament by the general Francesco Paolo Figliuolowho leads the Joint Operational Summit Command responsible for all missions abroad.
For the first time, the general provided data on the training of the Ukrainian army carried out by our instructors: it is a European initiative, conducted in our country and in the Belgian, German and Polish bases. Last year – declared Figliuolo – we held 42 courses in Italy and trained 1,420 Kiev soldiers.
Alliance operations in the Baltic
As for the operations of the Atlantic Alliance, the most delicate concern the Baltic. We are present at Malbork airport, “a few kilometers from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad – as Figliuolo underlined – with 220 soldiers, four Eurofighter fighters and an information research aircraft. It should be noted how incessant the operational activity in that area is, so much so that since the beginning of the year eight real immediate take-offs, called Alfa-Scramble, have been carried out to monitor the activities of Russian aircraft on the border of the Alliance’s airspace” .
Also yesterday, Air Force interceptors intervened twice to identify the Ilyushin twin-engine planes penetrated without warning into the Polish air traffic area of responsibility: these are spy aircraft, which monitor the reaction capacity of the Western protection network with their electronic instruments. The enlargement of NATO to Finland and Sweden has made the position of Kaliningrad, nestled in the Baltic within Poland, even more strategic. A Navy unit will also remain in those waters throughout the year: currently it is the “Luigi Rizzo” frigate, a modern Fremm with Aster surface-to-air missiles and a 127 mm cannon.
Eurofighters currently Air Policing out of Malbrok , had their first scramble 2 days ago & their second Alpha scramble yesterday
The jets intercepted a IL20 that was flying over the Baltic Sea. It was not answering to the requests of identification#SecuringTheSkies pic.twitter.com/AYPvoNxKyC
— NATO Air Command (@NATO_AIRCOM) April 10, 2024
The army
As for the Army, almost three hundred soldiers are in Latvia part of a Canadian-led battle group while the commitment in Bulgaria is preparing to grow qualitatively with the transformation of the department entrusted to our command into a brigade. Despite the distance from Ukraine, the Balkans are feeling the effects of the geopolitical earthquake caused by the clash with Russia. In Kosovo there are 850 Italian soldiers, who can quickly become 1,550 by transferring the task force kept on early alert, as was done last summer to manage the violent demonstrations of the Serbian minority.
The same situation that risks exploding in Herzegovina, where we have 180 soldiers and carabinieri on the field. Figliuolo announced that yesterday “the commitment of our SAMP-T anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense system was formally concluded in Slovakia”. It is one of five existing batteries, one of which is currently deployed in Kuwait: the only missile shield against threats from the air for the entire Peninsula. In recent days the Ukrainians have made an appeal to the Italian and French governments to obtain a second battery of this weapon, after the one donated a year ago by bringing together radars and launchers from both armies.