Hundreds of thousands of Nato troops will be put on a higher state of alert amid growing tensions with Russia, the head of the alliance has indicated.
Nato commanders want to prepare a substantial land force capable of deterring Russian aggression.
Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary-general, did not give precise figures, but Sir Adam Thomson, Britain’s outgoing permanent representative to Nato, said he thought that the goal was to speed up the response time of up to 300,000 military personnel to about two months. At present a force of this size could take up to 180 days to deploy.
The troops would act as a “follow-on force” to Nato’s existing response force, which can be deployed to a warzone within days. The personnel will come