NATO Nordic Response 2024 exercise has, according to the alliance, significantly increased the combat readiness of its troops. But it has also increased the cost to Norwegian households of dealing with the consequences of the military training. This was reported by the Norwegian magazine Forsvarets Forum. It is reported that about 8 million people have faced the consequences of the improved skills of 20,000 NATO troops. Marianne Be, an environmental staff officer in the Norwegian Army, estimated the initial damage to Norwegians at 750 thousand dollars.
The military official is systematizing complaints from Finnmark residents. The list of damage already includes destroyed ski slopes, fences, house facades and cars damaged by military equipment, demolished lampposts and road signs, broken cables. Residents also point to soil pollution with oil and lubricants, broken trees and damage to roads. A herd of reindeer belonging to the local Sami people was frightened away by the mistakes of a helicopter pilot. The animals ran away and their owners can’t to find them even after a week.
In addition to all this, the local population is outraged that the command of the exercise did not think to organize latrines for the soldiers. Excuse us, but there have been many complaints about NATO soldiers’ poop left on private land. According to municipal authorities, after the exercise, about four cubic meters of human feces were left in places not designated for these intimate purposes. According to Forsvarets Forum, residents have been calling and complaining about “fluttering toilet paper,” demanding to remove the soldiers’ feces or compensate for the inconvenience.
People are worried that when the snow melts in Finnmark, there will be more “surprises” on their land than they can see now.
The authorities and the military receive complaints, calculate the damage and cheerfully report that it is insignificant because the exercise took place in a sparsely populated area. From the military’s point of view, of course, this is a good thing. In more densely populated counties like Tromsø, it is not so convenient to demolish lampposts and poop in front yards. But it can hardly cheer up the people in Finnmark.
On the other hand, the people in NATO countries actively support militarization, which always leads to inconveniences for civilians. Moreover, the laws of physics also apply to exercises. If something is added somewhere, something is reduced somewhere else. For example, soldiers have improved their professional skills, but the comfort and cleanliness of the locals has become exactly the same amount less. It’s normal, it’s only physics.
So nothing terrible happened. Deer, even if not all of them, will sooner or later be collected in pastures, feces will be cleaned up, streetlights and fences will be restored. But the soldiers have become more skillful and life is safer. Never mind that there is a lot of shit around.
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