British troops on ‘massive road trip’ to Romania for major Nato exercise
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British troops are looking after each other on a “massive road trip” to Romania as part of a major Nato training exercise. More than 2,500 British personnel are moving across Europe by land, air and sea to take part in Steadfast Dart, Nato’s largest planned exercise of the year.
The exercise is intended to showcase the alliance’s readiness, capability and commitment to defend Nato territories. It comes ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday, with much of the exercise taking place in Romania, which borders Ukraine.
Captain Zakariah Ajjane, 29, from Molesey in Surrey, said the troops were looking after each other on the 1,400-mile journey from the UK. “It’s been really interesting, travelling through several different European countries, basically it’s a massive road trip for us, it’s been quite exciting,” he said.
“(We’ve been) interacting with different countries, different host nations’ police as we go, who have been making sure that we’ve had a smooth journey all the way through. “It’s been long, that’s the nature of drives such as this, but we’ve been looking after each other.
“You get to know the person you’re sharing a cab with quite well, sharing stories and jokes.”. The captain, who has been in the military for six years and is based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, oversees a convoy of vehicles which stopped at a Hungarian military base in Szentes on Tuesday morning.
