Sweden is hosting its largest military games so far this century to prepare for a possible Russian attack. The number of troops involved exceeds by several thousand those participating in the concurrent Russia-Belarus Zapad 2017 drills. Sweden’s Aurora 17 military exercise, the largest in over two decades, involves a total of 19,000 Swedish troops, as well as 1,435 soldiers from the US. Non-NATO member Sweden will
also host personnel from around 40 government agencies from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Norway and the United States, to practice active deterrence against a foreign enemy.“It is the greatest, the biggest, military exercise we have conducted for 23 years. We are exercising in a context where we are at home protecting our country, where we have the situation occurs when there is a military aggression towards a country,” Swedish Chief of Defense Micael Byden said Wednesday.
