British forces lead in largest Nato exercise since WWII

Kim Sengupta reports from Estonia as 90,000 troops from 32 states fight imaginary Russian invasion across six borders

- Kim Sengupta

Apache helicopter gunships carry out strafing runs in support of troops on the ground storming Russian positions. A series of fortified trenches have been cleared in fierce close-quarter combat, and a counterattack is repulsed with the use of drones and missiles.

The mission, Swift Response, is being carried out by British-led forces in Estonia as part of Nato's biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War, ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans. And it comes amid an increasingly heated confrontation with Moscow following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

There have been repeated warnings from the opposing sides, Nato and Moscow, of a potential conflagration. What is unfolding in Estonia are the opening salvoes of what a modern conflict between great powers would be like with the Western alliance making a stand on its eastern flank.

The stakes cannot be higher. President Putin has raised the possibility of nuclear weapons being used several times, as he has ratcheted up the rhetoric of warnings to the West since the start of the Ukraine war. The Nato response appears to be "prepare for the worst, hope for the best" while watching what the Kremlin does next.

Standing on a muddy field in Nurmsi in northern-central Estonia - a two-hour tank drive from the Russian border Brigadier Giles Harris, the commander of British forces in the Baltic, has no doubt about the imperative of dealing with the clear and present threat from the Kremlin.

"It's very urgent. I'm not going to second guess what may or may not happen, but as military personnel our job is to be ready. There is no point in waiting to be ready, we should get ready now. And what's playing out in Ukraine provides us with the lessons that we need to learn", he says.