US forces arrive in Poland as Ukraine-Russia standoff grinds on
American firepower lands in Poland as Senators call Ukraine tensions ‘Europe’s biggest threat since 1945’: First of 3,000 troops and armored vehicles fill bases after China backed Putin in NATO spat
Photos from the Baltic port city of Gdynia showed dozens of armed US Army M1126 Strykers and Humvees, as well as more than 200 pieces of American military equipment.
Meanwhile, 300 soldiers with the 18th Airborne Corps arrived in Wiesbaden, Germany, Thursday to set up a headquarters for future paratrooper deployments, according to the US military’s European Command.
Soldiers with the 435th Air Ground Operations Wing flew into Poland to prepare an airfield for the arrival of 1,700 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division.
The United States is sending more troops to Romania as part of a third group of 1,000 soldiers already stationed in Germany with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.
The Pentagon has also put 8,500 troops on alert in the U.S. for possible deployments.
There are currently about 4,500 U.S. troops in Poland under a bilateral and NATO structure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday, where they signed a joint statement calling on the west to ‘abandon the ideologized approaches of the Cold War.’ Xi also declared his opposition to NATO expansion in the joint statement. Putin has been seeking assurances that the U.S. would not bring in Ukraine as a member nation on its western border.
American officials accused Russia on Thursday of trying to run a ‘false-flag’ operation to create a pretext for war.
The White House has said it continues to hope for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, however, and has stopped referring to a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine as “imminent”.
