TAPA, Estonia—The AMX-10 RC tank destroyer has been deployed to far-flung battlefields in Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations in Mali. Now, they’re being deployed as part of a French combined arms squadron to Estonia, near the Russian border, to train with NATO forces and flex the Western alliance’s muscles against neighboring Russia.
For decades, Russia amassed the bulk of its advanced military forces in the so-called Western Military District, hunkered down on NATO’s borders, including near the Baltic States. Now, many of those forces have been thrown into the meat grinder in Ukraine, where Russia’s army has suffered devastating losses that could take decades to rebuild.
