Biden sending more troops to Europe amid Ukraine tension
India Today
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the soon-to-deploy US forces are intended to temporarily bolster US and allied defensive positions and will not enter Ukraine.
President Joe Biden is sending about 2,000 US-based troops to Poland and Germany and shifting 1,000 soldiers from Germany to Romania as demonstrations of American commitments to allies on NATO’s eastern flank amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the soon-to-deploy US forces are intended to temporarily bolster US and allied defensive positions and will not enter Ukraine.
“These are not permanent moves,” he said, stressing that the purpose is to reassure allies at a time of heightened tension over Russia’s buildup of an estimated 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders. Kirby said the Russian buildup has continued, even in the last 24 hours, despite US urgings that it deescalate.
The newly announced US troop deployments are in line with expectations based on Biden administration efforts to reassure allies and demonstrate U.S. resolve without undermining efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis.
The US already has several thousand troops in Poland, and Romania is host to a NATO missile defense system that Russia considers a threat to its security. Biden notably has not sent American military reinforcements to the three Baltic countries on NATO’s eastern flank — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — that are former states of the Soviet Union.
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Of the 2,000 deploying from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, about 1,700 are members of the 82nd Airborne Division infantry brigade, who will go to Poland. The other 300 are with the 18th Airborne Corps and will deploy to Germany as what the Pentagon called a “joint task force-capable headquarters.”