U.S. sends troops to Eastern Europe amid Ukraine crisis
The U.S. military is sending additional troops to Europe amid ongoing tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby confirmed Wednesday.
At a news conference, Kirby said that 1,000 Germany-based soldiers will be repositioned to Romania in the coming days, and approximately 2,000 more troops will be deployed from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Poland and Germany.
Kirby said the new troop movements are “separate and in addition to” the 8,500 U.S. military personnel placed on heightened readiness to deploy last week to assist with defending NATO allies in the event of renewed Russian aggression. Kirby also confirmed that additional forces — on top of that first 8,500 — have also received “prepare to deploy” orders, but he declined to provide details about how many and where these troops are.
Wednesday’s announcement comes as the Biden administration continues to engage in a tense back-and-forth with Russia over the Kremlin’s buildup of troops at Ukraine’s border, placing Europe on edge ahead of a prospective Russian invasion. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Russian officials have denied that they intend to attack Kyiv, and at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council earlier this week, Moscow accused the U.S. of “whipping up hysteria” and “provoking escalation.”
Last week, the U.S. and NATO delivered written responses to a number of security demands outlined by the Kremlin. While Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the document produced by Washington offered Russia “a diplomatic path forward,” he made clear that this path did not include concessions on the Kremlin’s primary demands, including the withdrawal of NATO troops from Eastern Europe and the guarantee that Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc countries would be prohibited from joining the alliance.
The Kremlin has yet to issue a formal response to the proposals put forth by the U.S. and NATO.
At the Pentagon on Wednesday, Kirby said that while the U.S. still believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not decided whether to launch an attack on Ukraine, “even over just the last 24 hours” Moscow has continued to amass forces and weapons along the Ukrainian border in Russia — as well as neighboring Belarus — and has “shown no signs of being willing to de-escalate tensions.”
Kirby emphasized that the latest U.S. military moves are “not permanent” and that they are “designed to respond to the current security environment,” adding that the Department of Defense is “not ruling out the possibility that there will be more coming up in future days and weeks.” He also reiterated that U.S. troops are not being sent to fight against Russian forces in Ukraine, but rather to defend neighboring NATO countries in the event of an attack.
“It’s important that we send a strong signal to Putin and frankly to the world, that NATO matters to the U.S.,” Kirby said. “We are making it clear that we are prepared to defend NATO allies if it comes to that. We hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Kirby declined to say whether the U.S. is planning to send any troops to Ukraine to conduct a noncombatant evacuation from the country if Russia does, ultimately, move ahead with an incursion. In a move criticized by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the State Department last week ordered the evacuation of diplomats’ families and nonessential staff from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. On Monday, a similar order was issued to family members of U.S. government employees at the embassy in Belarus, along with a travel advisory warning American citizens of an “unusual and concerning Russian military buildup along Belarus’ border with Ukraine.”
