Some 300 US Marines arrived in Norway on Monday for a rotational deployment in the Scandinavian country, to neighbouring Russia’s dismay amid rising tensions with the West. Officials played down any link between the operation and NATO concerns over Russia, but the deployment coincides with the U.S. sending several thousand troops to Poland to beef up its Eastern European allies worried about Moscow’s assertiveness. The deployment, by rotation so as not to anger Moscow, has been presented as a one-year test to enable the Marines to train and conduct exercises with the Norwegian army in harsh conditions.

The initiative has however annoyed Russia, amid rising tensions with the West over the Ukraine crisis and the conflict in Syria.

This “for sure won’t make better (the) security situation in Northern Europe,” a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Oslo, Maxim Gurov, told AFP in an October email.
The Norwegian government has argued that Nato troops regularly carry out exercises in the country and that deployment by rotation is not the same as opening a permanent US base.

Until now, the US has had large quantities of military materiel pre-positioned in tunnels dug into Norway’s mountains, but no troops.