NATO has been preparing since 2014 and Russia's annexation of Crimea and its first invasion of Ukraine. We've been very concerned with the potential for Russian aggression towards NATO.
There's been a lot of work done by SACEUR in terms developing plans to be able to respond to Russian aggression. Those plans are called “graduated response plans”. There are five of them. All five of these plans were activated by SACEUR with the approval of the North Atlantic Council last week. That has enabled SACEUR to significantly reinforce the nations that are on the eastern flank of NATO in accordance with those plans.
A number of nations, including Canada, have taken measures to reinforce the existing forces that they maintain in those areas. For Canada, that's obviously our battle group in Latvia. The government has already announced further reinforcing capabilities for that battle group.
This is very consistent with what all of our allies are doing. New battle groups are being created in the southeastern part of the alliance, including in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary.
These are all measures that SACEUR has taken to demonstrate to Russia NATO's resolve and intent to make sure that we keep alliance partners safe. And—