Denmark is pulling forces out of Iraq and reinforcing its military units at home and, with NATO, in the Baltics.
“We must be prepared for the Danish presence in the Baltics to be long-term, and there is a need for balancing between having soldiers on the ground and being ready to deploy them from Denmark,” the Nordic country’s Acting Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said on Tuesday, May 2.
He also announced that his country had pledged military equipment and financial support to Ukraine worth 1.7 billion Danish kroner ($250 million).
In February 2024, Denmark will pull one of its security and escort units of about 105 soldiers out of Iraq but will continue to provide staff and advice to NATO’s mission there.
At the same time, Denmark is enhancing its collaboration with NATO in the Baltic countries. It has offered NATO a battalion of between 700 and 1,200 soldiers that is expected to be deployed in Latvia between four and six months every year. For the rest of the year, the same troops will remain in Denmark, ready to be deployed to the Baltic states.
“As of mid-2024, Denmark will make a battalion available to NATO for the defence of the Baltic states, which will be deployed in Latvia part of the year and the rest of the year in Denmark, where it will be on standby ready to go to the Baltic states in the event of a crisis,” a ministry statement also said.
Besides the Danish forces’ deployment capacity, “the composition and the size of the battalion, as well as the duration of the specific deployments, will depend on NATO and its allies’ needs,” the statement added.
Last March, Denmark sent 225 soldiers to Estonia as part of the permanent NATO mission in the Baltics it participates in called the “Enhanced Forward Presence.”
