An interim force of German, Norwegian and Dutch troops has been deployed in Eastern Europe to respond to any security threat from the east, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday.

The new "high-readiness spearhead force" is in place for 2015, Stoltenberg said after calling on Russia to respect the sanctity of postwar borders in Europe and the core values on which the continent's democracies are based.

It was Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula 10 months ago that prompted the Western defense alliance to create the rapid-response force that will rotate troops into frontline states along Russia's borders.

Stoltenberg did not disclose the number of troops already deployed. The ultimate size of the force will be "several thousand troops" able to respond within a few days to any attack or security threat to a member state, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said.

Ukraine is not a member of the 28-nation defense alliance and it pledged in 2010 to remain nonaligned. The Ukrainian parliament retracted that position late last year in a signal that it intends eventually to apply for NATO membership.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is staunchly opposed to what he sees as NATO encroachment into Moscow's traditional sphere of influence. He is also clearly displeased with Ukraine's moves toward eventual membership in the European Union. It was after a Kremlin-allied Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted by a pro-European rebellion that Russian troops seized Crimea and Russian arms and mercenaries began flowing into eastern Ukraine.

Putin denies Russia is involved in the fighting in Ukraine that has killed more than 4,700 people in nine months, and he has justified the "reunion" of Crimea with the Russian federation as correcting a historical wrong. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev deeded the territory that is home to the Russian Black Sea fleet to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954.

Stoltenberg alluded to "the challenges we are facing to the east" during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"We see that international law is violated, and that the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not respected. And we call on Russia to respect the Minsk agreements," Stoltenberg said.

He was referring to the Sept. 5 cease-fire signed in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, by Russia and Ukraine that set out a plan for halting artillery fire, withdrawing heavy weaponry, freezing the front lines and exchanging prisoners. The agreement has been repeatedly violated and few of its provisions fulfilled beyond a recent exchange of about 370 captives.

Originally posted here:

NATO sends rapid-reaction forces to Russia's neighbors