美国有线新闻 CNN 美国把俄视为最大威胁 冷战后最大规模增兵东欧

First story this Thursday, it's about one of the largest U.S. Military deployments in Europe since the Cold War. It's not just several thousand U.S. troops who recently arrived in Germany. It's tanks, armored trucks, artillery 1, twenty-four hundred pieces of military equipment. And it will be spread out across Eastern Europe.

This is part of an American effort to show it's committed to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That was formed in 1949 by European countries and the U.S., as a sort of guard against the Soviet 2 Union.

Today, NATO members are concerned about Russia. The country has supported the pro-Russian forces who are fighting Ukrainian government troops in eastern Ukraine, and Russia controversially took over Crimea, a region of Ukraine, in early 2014.

At that time, the vast majority of people in Crimea voted to make their region part of Russia, instead of Ukraine. But Russia's takeover was something that Ukraine and several other countries, including the U.S., did not accept, and it troubled leaders throughout NATO, including those in Latvia.

That's where some U.S. troops are currently engaged in training exercises.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: War games in the snowy fields of Eastern European, as U.S. soldiers trained in Latvia. Twenty-five years ago, this was part of the Soviet Union. Today, Latvia is part of the European Union, and also a U.S. military ally in NATO.

These are live fire exercises, that's why I've got to wear all these extra protective armor. Military commanders say they're trying to show that they're a force of deterrence 3 and their number one potential threat, Latvia's much bigger neighbor to the east.

COLONEL GREGORY ANDERSON, U.S. ARMY: The origins were really a response to Russian activity in 2014, when the strategic situation changed.

WATSON: He's talking about Russia's annexation 4 of the Crimean Peninsula, after Russian forces drove Ukrainian troops out of this corner of Ukraine in 2014.

Russia's land grab frightens people and former Soviet republics like Latvia, where there are still bitter memories after a half century of Soviet occupation.

But there are two sides to this tension. We travelled from Latvia, across Lithuania to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave in Europe that's cut off from mainland Russia. In Soviet times, this was heavily militarized place, closed off from the outside world.

Kaliningrad was recently thrust back into the spotlight 5 after Russia deployed 6 nuclear-capable missiles here. Russia's top diplomat 7 defended the move, arguing it's the U.S. that's threatening Russia.

Kaliningrad is still the headquarters of the Russian navy's Baltic fleet and Moscow has been flexing 8 its own muscles, performing military drills in the region.

Rival militaries maneuvering 9 along opposite sides of increasingly tense borders, in a land that still bears scars from the last time armies fought here.