The exercise will show the US-led military alliance's "unity", "strength" and "determination", said NATO's Supreme Allied Commander.
ADVERTISEMENTNATO will launch its biggest military exercise in decades next week with around 90,000 personnel set to take part in months of drills.
It is aimed at showing the alliance can defend all of its territory up NATO's border with Russia, top officers said on Thursday.
The exercises come amid a stalemate in the Ukraine war, with wintery weather conditions freezing the battlefields, and fears that Russia threaten NATO's eastern flank.
NATO itself is not directly involved in the conflict, except to supply Kyiv with non-lethal support. However, many member states send weapons and ammunition individually or in groups to Kyiv, plus provide military training for its troops.
Secret plans recently disclosed suggest the German government foresees an incoming build-up of Russian troops in Belarus and the exclave of Kaliningrad, Russia’s most westerly territory, putting pressure on Poland’s border.
Experts previously told Euronews that Russian forces could potentially cut off the Baltics from Poland through the Suwałki Gap, long seen as a NATO vulnerability.
In the months before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, NATO began beefing up security on its eastern flank with Russia and Ukraine. It’s the alliance’s biggest build-up since the Cold War.
The war games are meant to deter Russia from targeting a member country.
The exercises - dubbed Steadfast Defender 24 - “will show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometres, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any condition,” the 31-nation organisation said.
Troops will be moving to and through Europe until the end of May in what NATO describes as “a simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary.”
Under NATO’s new defence plans, its chief adversaries are Russia and terrorist organisations.
“The alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via transatlantic movement of forces from North America,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, US General Christopher Cavoli, told reporters.
He added the exercise would demonstrate "our unity, our strength, and our determination to protect each other.”