NATO declares state of alert for 320,000 soldiers

As many as 300,000 soldiers in the NATO alliance have been placed on high alert due to rising tensions between Russia and the Baltic states, reports Patria.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance hopes to speed up the response time for many of its units so they can react to a combat situation in time.

Stoltenberg announced back in June that NATO would launch the biggest reinforcement of its collective defense since the end of the Cold War, but did not provide any further details.

British representative to NATO, Sir Adam Thomson, revealed that the number is around 300,000 soldiers, and that they are looking for ways to mobilize these units within two weeks, instead of the six months it would normally take.

Sir Adam explained that NATO is responding to the increasing number of espionage, hybrid, and cyber attacks from Russia and other non-NATO member states.

The goal is to calm former Soviet states such as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which are all now NATO members, and which fear that Moscow might try to repeat the Ukrainian scenario on their territory - a military intervention to 'protect the Russian minority'.

Latvia is the most exposed, with Russians making up as much as a third of its population, half of whom do not even have citizenship status after controversial changes to the Latvian Constitution.

American military analysts, who have conducted military simulations, believe that Russian forces could overrun the current NATO units in the Baltics in just a few hours in the event of a military conflict, writes Jutarnji.