NATO is building one of its largest airbases in Europe

A flurry of excavators and trucks plowed through Dobruja, the vast plateau overlooking the Black Sea in eastern Romania, Lemonde reports.

In the middle of this dry and not very fertile landscape, the machines were already digging, terracing and tracing out what will be a runway here, and taxiways for airplanes there.

"What do you think?" asked Captain Engineer Aurel Bocai on Thursday, July 25, as he proudly toured the gigantic construction site, which had only begun a month and a half earlier.

The military base at Mihail Kogqlniceanu, Constanta, southeast Romania, on the Black Sea coast, will become the largest NATO military base in Europe and will surpass the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, in size.

The new base will give Romania an increased role in NATO’s security architecture and a position of greater strength in the Black Sea, which is militarily dominated by Russia. It will be able to host 10,000 soldiers and civilians by 2030.

RHM/PR