The large-scale naval schools to be launched in the Baltic Sea, with the participation about 30 ships and over 3,000 military personnel Western NATO member states will focus for the first time on ways to repel a Russian attack in the region, the head of the German Navy said today.

“We are sending Russia a clear message of vigilance: Not while we’re here,” Vice Admiral Jan Christian Kaak told reporters in Berlin. “Credible deterrence must include the ability to strike.”

The high schools will start on September 9 and will last two weeks on the coasts of Latvia and Estonia. They will involve military forces from all NATO countries in the Baltic Sea, Sweden, which is expected to join the Alliance, as well as the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. High schools will include amphibious operations, sea-to-land strikes and securing sea routes through the Baltic Sea.

The US Navy (Navy) will send the Mesa Verde, a ship more than 200 meters long, designed to carry and disembark about 800 Marines in an amphibious assault.

“Finland and the Baltic States are almost 100% dependent on sea routes supply through the Baltic Sea,” the German vice admiral noted. “If the Suwalki Corridor is blocked – and that can be easily done, as there are only two roads and a railway line – then we will only be left with sea routes and from there we will have to go.”

The Souvalki Corridor, a narrow land corridor of about 65 km, it is the only land connection between the Baltic States and Poland and the main NATO territory in Europe.

The high schools are the first of this scale to be led by the German Navy, the largest navy in the Baltic Sea, Kaak said from the German navy’s new headquarters in Rostock, which has just been put on operational alert.

Germany aims to give the facility to NATO for a regional naval headquarters, capable of leading Alliance operations in the Baltic Sea in the event of a military conflict.

Finland joined NATO this year and Sweden’s application to join is expected to be approved soon. These two Nordic countries abandoned their neutrality policy and moved to join NATO in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This has radically changed the balance in the region along the shores of the Baltic Sea, belonging to states that have observed neutrality since the Napoleonic period. Except for Russia’s small stretch of coast, the entire coast will soon belong to NATO members.