It is now only contested by a few unconditional supporters of Moscow, the Russian Armies have suffered considerable losses in Ukraine. Thus, according to the Oryx reference site , they have now lost (destroyed, captured or damaged) in combat more than 10,000 pieces of major equipment, including more than 2,000 combat tanks, nearly 3,500 armored combat vehicles, more than 900 systems. artillery or even 170 planes and helicopters and more than ten military ships.
As for the human losses, much more difficult to assess, they would be around 180,000 killed, wounded and missing since the start of the conflict.
For many European countries, these losses are so high that it will necessarily take a long time for Moscow to reconstitute a conventional armed force sufficient to threaten NATO and its neighbors.
This is how the major European armies, French, German, Italian or British, have committed to an effort which, certainly, aims to respond to the evolution of the threat and the return of the risks of major conventional conflicts in Europe, but this over a relatively long timetable, that is to say over ten or fifteen years, i.e. the estimated time needed for Russia to recover from the Ukrainian disaster, whatever the conclusion of this conflict.
For Eastern and Northern European countries, on the other hand, the perspective is very different. The most blatant example, although probably excessive, is none other than Poland, which for several months has been making a colossal effort aimed at providing the country with conventional military power capable of containing, if necessary without the help of its European allies, the Russian threat in the making.
Without the obvious excesses of Warsaw, this concern about a resurgence of the Russian threat much sooner than envisaged in Paris, Berlin or Rome, is also shared by the countries of Northern Europe and Scandinavia, which are committed, them too, in an important effort on this subject.
This is particularly the case of Norway which, despite a small population of just over 5 million inhabitants, has remarkable military power, with almost 25,000 men and women under the flag, partly provided by a non-compulsory military service.
Above all, the Norwegian armed forces are particularly well equipped, with around fifty Leopard 2A4 heavy tanks soon to be replaced by Leopard 2A7+ supported by 160 CV90 infantry fighting vehicles, around thirty K9 self-propelled guns protected by a ground-to-air battery. NASAMS assembled within a Combat Brigade of 4,500 men. The air forces field around fifty F16 and F-35A fighters, five P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol planes and around forty helicopters.
With more than 80,000 km of coastline due to its very specific geography, rich in Fjords, Norway also has a powerful navy, with 4,000 soldiers, and above all currently fielding 6 Ula class submarines, 4 Fritjof-class 5,300-ton frigates (after the loss of the 5th unit, the Helge Ingstad frigate in June 2019), as well as 6 Skjold-class missile corvettes, 4 Alta-class mine warships (2 ) and Oksøj, and a large logistics ship, the Maud.
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