R&I-Shannon
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Alex Marquardt and Jeremy Harlan, CNN
Updated 7:24 AM ET, Wed May 12, 2021
Constanta, Romania (CNN)Lit only by an orange floodlight, a single file of camouflaged men crept along the wall of a small, dark Romanian port on the Black Sea. Suddenly, they opened fire on the two men guarding a darkened warehouse with broken windows.
Moving past the fallen guards, an American voice – among the mix of men speaking accented English — shouted at two others in a car: “Get out! Hurry up, hurry up.”
The team of US Navy SEALs, along with Romanian and Spanish Special Forces, quickly and quietly worked their way through the warehouse, firing on enemy fighters and, when possible, taking them prisoner. When the operation was done, the assaulting team — whose ammunition had consisted of plastic projectiles and paint rounds — was told by an instructor they had passed the course and to get back in position to run it again.
The SEALs, from Virginia Beach, are in Romania this month as part of a contingent of American special forces taking part in the “
Trojan Footprint” military exercises across five Eastern European countries that involve 600 NATO and non-NATO forces, including troops from Ukraine and Georgia, which have both been invaded by Russia in recent years. The training is taking place alongside this month’s much larger Defender-Europe 21 NATO joint exercises, which
have some 28,000 forces participating from 26 different countries.
Both sets of military training exercises, while long-planned, follow a series of aggressive Russian military moves across Europe. CNN was given exclusive access to see the American special forces – the SEALs and US Army’s Green Berets – exercise in Romania and North Macedonia over several days. In central Romania, the Green Berets fast roped and rappelled down from helicopters alongside Ukrainian and Romanian soldiers before blasting and shooting their way into a makeshift house.
Story Continues
Bugs Marlowe
Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/11/politics/romania-nato-exercises-russia/index.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2005.12.21&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief
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