Maj. Vincent Mucker of the United States Army said that the training exercises were planned before Russia’s annexation of Crimea last March and its backing of separatists in southeast Ukraine.

“This is business as usual between the United States and Georgia,” Major Mucker said.

The exercises were the first time that a company of battle armor had been transported into the Caucasus region across the Black Sea, proving, Major Mucker said, “that we can use the Black Sea as a transit corridor.” Though the government has set a goal of normalizing relations with Russia, views of Moscow remain tainted by a 2008 war over the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that resulted in a stinging defeat for Georgia.

“If Russia were a normal country, it wouldn’t be concerned by 300 guys and a bunch of Bradleys,” said Davit Bakradze, a former chairman of Georgia’s Parliament and now an opposition politician, who was at Monday’s ceremony. “But they think of Georgia as their sphere of influence. This exercise shows that it clearly is not and that should not be downplayed.”

It is just one in a series of military exercises being held this spring in countries in Scandinavia, the Baltics, Eastern Europe, and now the Caucasus, that have one thing in common: their proximity to Russia.

NATO began anti-submarine exercises off the Norwegian coast last week. Lithuania, a NATO member, is preparing its military for an attack of “green men,” the Russian soldiers without insignia who seized Crimea’s airport and Parliament last spring. In Ukraine, American soldiers are training National Guard units fighting Russian-backed separatists in the southeast.