US Army Tests Out Macedonian Military Training Centre

Some 200 soldiers from the US peacekeeping force in nearby Kosovo are giving Macedonia’s landmark Krivolak army training centre a test run for much bigger exercises planned for the near future.

US soldiers at the Krivolak training area in Macedonia on August 3. Photo: CASEY HUSTIN/US ARMY

As Macedonia begins talks about joining NATO, an ongoing US military exercise may pave the way for restoring the country’s landmark Krivolak army training centre to its full capacity, offering thousands of NATO soldiers a place to drill.

“Macedonia is not only using NATO resources, but it has something to offer to the alliance as well. The US land forces training in Krivolak can prove this,” Macedonian Defence Minister Radmila Shekerinska told media on Wednesday while visiting the training site accompanied by the US deputy ambassador to Macedonia, Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm.

The 20-day US drill which will finish on August 20 aims to demonstrate that the site is suitable for larger exercises such as one planned next year dubbed ‘Decisive Strike 2019’ that will involve about 1,000 US and Macedonian soldiers, US military officials told American military magazine Stars and Stripes last week.

“The US Army is always looking for places to train,” Patrick Enriquez, deputy chief for the Office of Defence Cooperation at the US embassy in Skopje told Stars and Stripes last week.

“We’ve been marketing Krivolak as an alternative, if not a solution,” he explained.

Built some 70 years ago, the training site was used by the former Yugoslav military for high-calibre weapons training and aerial assault drills.

This makes Krivolak “perfect for large allied exercises”, said Enriquez.

With the dissolution of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, much of the site quickly fell into disrepair, and has since then been used by the Macedonian Army who cannot utilise it to its full capacity.

The site offers similar training capabilities to Grafenwoehr in Germany, but is a three-hour drive from Kosovo, which has no place for soldiers to do weapons training at this level, officials said.

The training area’s proximity to Kosovo would permit US and other troops from NATO’s Kosovo force KFOR to return quickly to their posts in case of an emergency, US Colonel Nick Ducich, commander of the Multi-National Battle Group in charge of security in eastern Kosovo, told Stars and Stripes.

When Krivolak is fully restored, it could accommodate a mechanised brigade of several thousand soldiers, Ducich said.

In July, NATO formally invited Macedonia to begin talks to join the alliance.

This was made possible after Macedonia signed a historic deal with Greece aimed at resoving their bilateral name dispute.

Under the deal, Macedonia agreed to change its name to Republic of North Macedonia, while Greece agreed to lift its long-standing veto on Macedonia’s NATO and EU integration.

For the deal to be fully implemented, Macedonians must show they support it in a referendum slated for September 30.

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