Canada extending military mission in Latvia to ‘deter’ Russia, Carney says
Global News
Carney's office says there are now 2,000 Canadian Armed Forces troops in Latvia as part of Operation Reassurance, which is Canada’s largest overseas mission.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced that Canada will keep troops in Latvia through to 2029, as part of a mission to deter Russian aggression in Europe that has given Ottawa an outsized role in the transatlantic alliance.
“We must deter and fortify. And that is the way that we can provide true reassurance,” Carney said at a Tuesday news conference in Riga, flanked by Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina.
Carney’s office says there are now 2,000 Canadian Armed Forces troops in Latvia as part of Operation Reassurance, which is Canada’s largest overseas mission. Canadian troops have been there since 2017 to strengthen the defence of Europe’s eastern flank and to deter Russian from invading Baltic countries, through what many call a “trip wire.”
The current authority for the mission ends in March 2026, but Carney says he plans to extend that by another three years.
“We will in the process increase the brigade’s capabilities here in Latvia, reinforce our collective defence, strengthen our co-operative security, and keep the NATO presence strong,” Carney said.
Canada is co-ordinating the role of soldiers from roughly 10 countries in Latvia, to shore up the country’s defences and to train Latvian soldiers, according to Carleton University professor Stephen Saideman.
“We’re punching above our weight,” he said in an interview. “We’re basically being treated by the rest of NATO as equal to the U.K. and Germany,” who are co-ordinating similar multinational brigades in Estonia and Lithuania respectively.
Ottawa aims to have a full cadre of 2,200 persistently deployed Canadian troops in Latvia sometime in 2026, and has been building new infrastructure at the Adazi base near Riga in the past two years to make up for overcrowding.
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