NATO is to begin its biggest war games in decades next week, with around 90,000 military personnel taking part in months of drills aimed at showing that the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia, top officers said on Thursday.

The exercises come as an increasing number of analysts say that Russia has largely already defeated the military alliance in its proxy war in Ukraine.

In the months before President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Nato began reinforcing security on its eastern flank, in the alliance’s biggest build-up of forces since the cold war.