Scaparrotti to visit Macedonia today
General Curtis Scaparrotti, head of U.S. European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander, is visiting Macedonia on Thursday.
He is set to meet with PM Zoran Zaev. Earlier, General Scaparrotti will be officially welcomed at the Ministry of Defence, where he will meet with delegation from the Defence Ministry and the Army, led by Defence Minister Radmila Sekerinska.
After the meeting, he is to attend exercise, which will be conducted in the Ilinden barracks.
The top U.S. military commander in Europe told a Senate committee on March 8, 2018 warned that the Balkans are facing increased covert and overt pressure from Russia, and that Washington and NATO need to do more to keep the region from destabilizing.
Army General Curtis Scaparrotti also told that the United States has not come up with an effective response to Russian cyber threats, in what is the latest warning from top U.S. military and civilian officials.
“The area I am concerned about today is the Balkans actually,” he said.
“Russia is at work in the Balkans and we have kind of taken our eye off the area.”
“That is an area we could have problems with in the future,” he added.
Scaparrotti visited Turkey at the beginning of August.