Having arrived in Germany a few days ago, a mass of over 3,000 US ground troops backed by a large column of American tanks are advancing eastward toward the Russian border today, heading across Poland as part of a major NATO operation called Atlantic Resolve.

Unlike a lot of more specific war-games simulating explicit wars on certain fronts, Atlantic Resolve was initially launched just to spite Russia over the civil war in Eastern Ukraine, and seems to be designed more or less to simply antagonize Russia militarily.

And it’s doing it’s job, in that event, as Russian officials expressed serious concern over the matter, saying they believe the advance of a large number of US troops heading toward Russia is a threat to national security. They also added that they don’t appreciate having a large number of troops massed on their European border by a nation that isn’t even European.

In addition to being the latest in a long line of NATO operations against Russia, and the largest such operation in Europe since the Cold War, the operation is seen as part of an ongoing effort within NATO to lock President-elect Donald Trump into a policy of hostility toward Russia.

Trump’s talk of normalizing ties with Russia has been a source of major concern and criticism among European NATO nations, who insist that the US needs to continue to lead ongoing plans for major military buildups in Europe, with an eye toward a ground war against Russia.

Pentagon officials insisted the advance on Russia proved America’s commitment to “collective security” in Europe, while Polish officials insisted Russia had it coming to them because they had accepted Crimea into the Russian Federation.

While this operation is said to be relatively brief, the Obama Administration has already made agreements with NATO aiming to commit large numbers of US ground troops to deploy in the Baltic states on a more or less permanent basis as a “spearhead” force against Russia.