BRUSSELS, December 22. /TASS/. The United States will accelerate the deployment of troops in Northern Europe as a result of the agreements signed with six countries in the region - Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - in order to use them as a bridgehead against Russia, the Politico newspaper says.

According to the daily the "defense agreements" Washington "signed signal a major shift that has occurred within NATO over the past two years as member countries race to restock arsenals after sending weapons to Ukraine and steel themselves for a new era of confrontation with Moscow."

The new multi-year defense cooperation agreements are "guidelines for allowing US troops to operate in the country for training missions and easing red tape for personnel and their equipment to deploy quickly in case of emergency." The deals "allow the US to say: this entire region is one defense region," said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a leading researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Now "in planning, exercises and deterrence operations you can do it all in a rational way, rather than having to say - we can't refuel in Sweden," said Salonius-Pasternak.

"The key driver for all of these agreements is concerns about European security and the need to have more US forces eastward, particularly the Finland case," said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing earlier that the US-Finland defense cooperation agreement indicated that Washington was taking control of Northern Europe. There is a "rapid military development of the territories of the two countries by NATO states, while Sweden has not even joined the alliance yet," Zakharova said.