Deployment of troops approved

The Security Council and Government of the Slovak Republic have approved the deployment of up to 152 service personnel for the training mission in the Republic of Latvia in the second quarter of 2017. This is a commitment the Slovak Republic made at the NATO Summit in Warsaw last year as part of the measures to strengthen NATO's collective defence on the Alliance's eastern borders. The deployment of our troops to the Baltics still needs to be endorsed by the National Council of the Slovak Republic. As SVK Minister of Defence Peter Gajdoš stated, the aim of such training is to develop collective interoperability among the armed forces of NATO member countries. Contributions to the mission under the Visegrad Four were declared concurrently with that of ours by the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The V4 countries will be engaged in the Baltics in quarterly cycles, one by one throughout the entire year 2017. Slovak troops will operate in Latvia from April through June 2017. The Czech Republic will be operationally committed to the Baltics in the first quarter of 2017, to be followed by Slovakia, Hungary and the Republic of Poland, in the second, third and fourth quarters, respectively.