Garcevic Publishes Op-Ed on Russian Military Exercises

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Amb. Vesko Garcevic, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at the Frederick S.Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed on how NATO and the EU are monitoring and reacting to upcoming Russian military exercises, one of its biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War.

Garcevic’s Op-Ed, entitled “Russia’s Big Games Strike Echoes in the Balkans,” was published on September 14, 2017 in Balkan Insight

From the text of the article:

It’s just a day before the Russian military exercise, codenamed Zapad [West], starts from September 14 through to September 20, in Belarus, Kaliningrad, and Russia.

While Russia is preparing to mount one of its biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War, NATO and the EU are following what is going on with suspicion. 

The display of Russian military muscle flexing is controversial for several reasons.

While Western experts expect up to 100,000 military personnel to take part in the exercise, Moscow claims the number of troops will not exceed 13,000. 

During his diplomatic career, Amb. Vesko Garcevic dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He had been a Montenegro’s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as a Montenegro’s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School.