Nearly 7,000 Dutch troops are rehearsing how to halt a possible Russian-style NATO invasion by practically and formally integrating Ukraine’s combat techniques, in the Netherlands’ biggest army exercise in two decades. Exercise Fighter Lion was launched on June 1, with the first convoys departing from Havelte, according to the Dutch Ministry of Defense. The exercise runs through early July on the Bergen-Hohne training grounds, roughly 37 miles (roughly 60 kilometers) south of Hamburg in Lower Saxony’s forested lowlands, using fishing nets and anti-drone tunnels, as well as other lessons learned from Ukraine’s battlefield.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. “It went great. We stopped the attackers,” the commander of the 13th Light Brigade from Oirschot said to regional outlet Eindhovens Dagblad, after completing the exercise’s opening defensive phase. As per the Dutch Defense Ministry’s statement, the “goal is to maintain combat power during an extended period of time.” The exercise tests “not only combat effectiveness of units, but also their ability to cooperate and remain operational under realistic conditions.” A war scenario built on reality According to the Defence Blog, the exercise’s scenario is fictional, but “unmistakably based on Russia,” with the setup closely mirroring the actual defensive challenge NATO has identified along Europe’s northeastern flank.