Finland is hosting its first large-scale NATO artillery exercise since the Nordic nation joined the military alliance last year, with live fire drills starting on Sunday.
The exercise conducted in the northern Lapland region in November is part of Dynamic Front 25, the largest NATO artillery exercise ever held in Europe, with fire drills in Finland as well as Estonia, Germany, Romania and Poland.
Running from 4 to 28 November, it marks the first time NATO allies are practicing artillery fire at a large scale on Finnish soil.
The Nordic nation, which shares a border with Russia, joined NATO last year, dropping decades of military non-alignment after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“We work on interoperability with our allies, to carry out artillery fire in coherence with our NATO allies,” said Romain, a French army captain and unit commander of the Ecrins battery of the 93rd mountain artillery …