NATO-Georgian Exercise 2019 Starts

The NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019 was officially opened by First Deputy Defence Minister Lela Chikovani and Brigadier General Ladislav Jung, the JFTC Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff at the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center, National Training Center Krtsanisi near Tbilisi earlier today, involving military personnel from 24 Allies, Partner and several NATO command headquarters and affiliated centers. The Exercise will take place on March 18-29, seeing 350 participant soldiers.

The given exercise is designed to train a Georgian-led multinational brigade headquarters staff to plan, coordinate and execute scenario-based military responses to humanitarian crises and thus, improve the self-defence capabilities of Georgia.

“It is an important exercise for Georgia and a significant milestone in strengthening NATO-Georgia military and political cooperation,” Ministry of Defence of Georgia reports.

It is the second NATO-Georgia exercise to take place within the scope of Substantial NATO-Georgia Package (SNGP) - a set of 15 defence capacity building Initiatives agreed between Georgia and NATO at the Wales summit in 2014 and Warsaw Summit 2016. The first NATO-Georgia Exercise took place in 2016 and involved 14 NATO allied and partner nations.

The brigade-level exercise is organized by NATO-Georgia JTEC of the Georgian Defence Forces, NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT), NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA), NATO LANDCOM, Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC) and Partnership for Peace (PfP) countries.

Humanitarian bodies, including International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO, observer) will also be present during the exercise providing direct feedback and mentorship to exercise participants.

By Ketevan Kvaratskheliya

Image source: Ministry of Defence