PRESS RELEASE

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General Hodges Worried About Russia’s ‘Hot Breath’ in Sweden

July 25, 2017 (EIRNS)—Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges was in Sweden yesterday, where he was stirring up the same paranoid Russophobia that he was in Eastern Europe last week. "Russia has changed the security environment," Hodges told the Swedish Dagens Nyheter daily.

"We have to react to that, and not just the U.S., but the whole of NATO. The countries closest to the bear have historical experience. They feel the hot breath of the bear—and they are the ones most worried."

Hodges was in Sweden in preparation for the Aurora 17 exercise coming up in September, which will involve 19,000 troops, including 1,435 soldiers from the United States, 270 from Finland, 120 from France, and between 40-60 each from Denmark, Norway, Lithuania, and Estonia. "Aurora 17 is the first and biggest exercise of its kind in more than 20 years," said Sweden’s Armed Forces.

Sweden, in response to the anti-Russian hysteria fostered by NATO, has been remilitarizing its island of Gotland, in the middle of the Baltic Sea (it had been demilitarized in 2005). "You have a strategically very important task here," Hodges said. "I do not think there is any island anywhere that is more important."