U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday, January 28, that the U.S. plans to send more troops to Eastern Europe. As part of the plan, NATO countries will strengthen their presence in the region, writes Deutsche Welle.
Biden said U.S. troops would be moved to the eastern flank of the North Atlantic Alliance “in the near future” and specified that they would be not many of them.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said earlier in the day that no order to send troops has yet been given. He said the troops are in “pre-deployment mode” and would be ready to act if NATO gives the order. Even earlier, Austin spoke of 8,500 troops that have been on alert since January 24.
Joe Biden stressed that this is a precautionary measure, and no U.S. military will be sent to Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are usually deployed in Europe.
On 28 January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he was seeking U.S. participation in the de-escalation negotiations of the situation near the Ukrainian border.
The Ukrainian news agency DPA quoted Western intelligence agencies as saying that Russia had increased its military presence on the border with Ukraine to 112-120,000 people. In addition, there are about 35,000 armed pro-Russian separatists in Donbas.
The Kremlin claims that the military is at Ukraine’s borders solely for the purpose of conducting exercises and denies the intention to attack Ukraine, while the West suspects that such a scenario is quite possible.
belsat.eu
