MONS, Belgium, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The United States will send 20,000 troops to Europe next April and May in its biggest military exercises on European soil since the Cold War to underscore Washington's commitment to NATO, a senior allied commander said on Tuesday.

Days after a NATO summit in London at which U.S. President Donald Trump called low-spending European allies "delinquent", U.S. Major General Barre Seguin said the exercises, centred on Germany, will be the largest of their kind in 25 years.

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Eager to deter Russia from any repeat of its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, the U.S. Army will test its ability to transport the soldiers across the Atlantic to Belgium and the Netherlands and then move quickly east through Germany into Poland and along NATO's eastern flank.

The soldiers will join U.S. personnel stationed across the continent, as well as militaries from 18 NATO allies, to mass around 37,000 troops, before returning to the United States, in an echo of the 'Return of Forces to Germany', or 'REFORGER' manoeuvres, of the 1980s.