The Chief of Army’ s General Staff, Lieutenant General Vasko Gjurchinovski, who is on a working visit to the Kingdom of Norway, participated in the annual NATO Military Committee Conference (MC) in Oslo today.
At the Conference, which was officially opened by the chair of the Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer and in presence of the Supreme Commanders of the Allied Forces in Europe and the Allied Forces for Transformation, Generals Christopher Cavoli and Philippe Lavigne, a number of topics have been discussed.
Following the agenda, in separate sessions, the Chiefs of Defence of NATO Allies, discussed topics related to strengthening NATO’s defense and deterrence in the long term, in all domains and against all threats and challenges.
The necessary measures that should be implemented should follow up on the decisions taken at the NATO summit in Vilnius, key measures are the regional plans designed to deter and defend against the two threats described in the NATO Strategic Concept and Military Strategy: Russia and terrorist groups.
This is part of NATO’s evolution from an Alliance optimized for large-scale contingency operations fit for the purpose to defend every inch of allied territory.
Among other things, these decisions refer to placing a greater number of troops on a high level of combat readiness, continuous capability building and development, adaptation of NATO’s command and control structures, increasing possibilities in terms of logistics, host nation support, maintenance, replenishment and prepositioning of stocks, military mobility, as well as more intensive joint training and exercises.
The conclusions of the Military Committee, after the end of today’s conference, were announced by the chairman and the supreme commanders of the Allied Forces.
General Gjurchinovski also held bilateral meetings with Chiefs of the allied Armies, which contribute to development of bilateral defense activities. This is a meeting of the NATO Military Committee at the level of Chiefs of Defence, which takes place once a year in one of the member countries, while regular sessions are held at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Allies agreed to a fundamental change in NATO’s deterrence and defense concept, which includes strengthening forward defenses, enhancing battle groups in the eastern part of the Alliance, transforming NATO’s response force and increasing the number of combat readiness forces to over 300,000 with the additional formation of four more multinational battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. This has brought the total number of multinational battle groups to eight, and they span the entire eastern flank of NATO – from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.
The Army of the Republic of North Macedonia participates in this NATO operation with units in Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania.
