The Biden administration will reportedly be deploying more than 3,000 U.S. troops to European countries in an effort to bolster defenses around Ukraine as Russia continues to threaten to invade the country.
According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. officials said that “Biden is sending roughly 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Poland and Germany this week and repositioning about 1,000 troops that are part of a Germany-based infantry Stryker squadron to Romania, on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastern flank closest to Russia.”
The forces are expected to be deployed in the next few days. A senior defense official told The Wall Street Journal that the troops “are trained and equipped for a variety of missions during this period of elevated risk.” The official added that the deployments are “meant to deter the threat against the alliance. We are literally willing to put skin in the game.”
A senior Biden administration official also told Fox News that “At the President’s direction and following Secretary Austin’s recommendation, the Department of Defense will reposition certain Europe-based units further east, forward deploy additional U.S.-based units to Europe, and maintain the heightened state of readiness of response forces to meet these commitments.”
“These forces are not going to fight in Ukraine. They are not permanent moves. They respond to current conditions,” the official added.
The news comes a few weeks after the Biden administration revealed it has information suggesting that Russia has “prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine” in order to set the stage for an invasion.
According to a report from CNN, a U.S. official said the U.S. “has evidence that the operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces… The Russian military plans to begin these activities several weeks before a military invasion, which could begin between mid-January and mid-February. We saw this playbook in 2014 with Crimea.”
