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[ad_1] An air deployment exercise billed as the biggest in NATO’s history and hosted by Germany got underway on Monday. According to international media reports, the Air Defender 2023 exercise that is set to run through June 23 was long-planned but serves to showcase the alliance’s capabilities amid high tensions with Russia. The first planes took off on Monday morning from airfields in northern Germany. Some 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 nations will respond to a simulated attack on a NATO member. The United States alone is sending 2,000 U.S. Air National Guard personnel and about 100 aircraft. “The exercise is a signal — a signal above all to us, a signal to us, the NATO countries, but also to our population that we are in a position to react very quickly ... that we would be able to defend the alliance in case of attack,” German air force chief Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz told newsmen. Gerhartz said he proposed the exercise in 2018, reasoning that Russia’s anne

[ad_1] At least 30 peacekeepers of the NATO-led mission in Kosovo were injured on Monday in clashes with Serb protesters who demanded the removal of recently-elected ethnic Albanian mayors. According to international media reports, Kosovo Force (KFOR) said it had faced “unprovoked attacks” while countering a hostile crowd after demonstrators clashed with police and tried to force their way into a government building in the northern town of Zvecan. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said 52 Serbs were also hurt, three seriously, while one was “wounded with two gunshots by [ethnic] Albanian special forces”. Hungary’s defence minister said on Facebook “more than 20 Hungarian soldiers” were among the wounded, with seven in serious but stable condition. Italy’s foreign minister said three of its soldiers were seriously wounded, and the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, joined NATO in calling for “all parties to take a step back to lower tensions”. Kosovo’s Serbs boycott