President Biden on Wednesday signed off on sending additional troops to reinforce NATO allies in Eastern Europe amid a mounting crisis with Russia over Ukraine and security policy across the continent. The troops could begin deploying within days, U.S. officials said.
About 2,000 U.S. military personnel will be sent to forward locations in Poland, and 1,000 troops posted in Germany will move to Romania. Another 8,500 troops are on “high alert” for possible deployment to the region in the days to come.
Mr. Biden defended the moves as Washington and NATO frantically rushed to prevent a Russian incursion into Ukraine and the prospect of a shooting war in the heart of Europe three decades after the end of the Cold War.
The president said the increased deployment is “totally consistent” with what he has told Russian President Vladimir Putin during the stare-down over Ukraine.
“As long as he’s acting aggressively, we are going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we’re there and Article 5 is a sacred obligation,” Mr. Biden told reporters, citing the military alliance’s mutual defense pledge.
“They are moves designed to respond to the current security environment,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “They are going to ensure the robust defense of our NATO allies.”
Defense Department officials insisted that the U.S. troops will not be sent to Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO. Their mission will be to reassure and bolster the defenses of NATO allies in the region, Mr. Kirby said.
“We expect them to start moving in the coming days,” he said.
Russia is pouring more troops into the region and shows no sign of letting up, officials said.
“It’s important that we send a strong signal to Mr. Putin, and frankly to the world, that NATO matters to the United States,” Mr. Kirby said.
The Associated Press reported that Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said in a video posted on Twitter that “the strengthening of NATO’s eastern flank shows that the U.S. and the alliance are taking seriously the threat on Russia’s part and are taking resolute deterrent steps.”
Russia was predictably unhappy with the latest move.
“The unfounded destructive steps will only fuel military tensions and narrow the field for political decisions,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency.
Leaked responses
The Spanish newspaper El Pais published what U.S. and European officials confirmed were the written responses Mr. Putin had sought to his demands that NATO promise never to take in Ukraine as a member and to pull back its forces and weaponry posted near Russia’s western border.
According to leaked documents, the Biden administration said it is willing to reassure Russia that offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles will not be based in Romania and Poland if Moscow makes similar assurances for two missile sites in Russia,
Defense Department officials denied leaking what the U.S. called a confidential “non-paper,” but appeared to confirm that the El Pais documents were genuine.
“We did not make this document public. But now that it is, it confirms to the entire world what we have always been saying,” Mr. Kirby said. “NATO and its partners are unified in their resolve and open to constructive and serious diplomacy.”
El Pais said the documents indicate that the U.S. and NATO would be willing to discuss a “transparency mechanism” to confirm the absence of Tomahawk missiles at Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland. “Aegis Ashore” is a land-based version of the Navy’s missile defense system.
Washington is denying charges from Moscow that the missile sites in Poland and Romania could easily be adapted to fire the offensive cruise missiles rather than interceptors that ram their targets and don’t carry warheads. Still, Mr. Putin this week angrily denounced what he said was the threat the missiles pose to his homeland.
According to the documents published in the Spanish newspaper, U.S. diplomats said they would have to discuss the issue with NATO partners and other allies before any steps could be taken.
“The United States has gone the extra mile to find a diplomatic solution,” Mr. Kirby said. “If Russia actually wants to negotiate a solution as it claims it does, this document makes clear there is a path forward to do so.”
The leaked U.S. text once again called on Mr. Putin to stand down: “Progress can only be achieved on these issues in an environment of de-escalation with respect to Russia’s threatening actions towards Ukraine.”
The Russian Defense Ministry and the chief Kremlin spokesman declined to comment on the leaks or confirm their accuracy, but Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov predicted last week that the confidential responses would likely become public because they had been shared broadly throughout the 30 NATO countries.
Mr. Putin told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday that the U.S. and NATO responses had largely ignored Russia’s core security concerns, but the Kremlin said an official response to the documents was still being formulated.
The U.S. deployment to Romania includes about 1,000 soldiers from a Stryker cavalry squadron based in Germany. They will augment about 900 U.S. troops there, Mr. Kirby said.
A brigade combat team from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will be sent to Poland to bolster its defenses. An element from the division’s higher headquarters, the 18th Airborne Corps, will be sent to Germany to set up operations.
“We’re moving additional U.S. forces [to Eastern Europe] at the request and with the invitation of those countries. We take our NATO commitments very, very seriously,” Mr. Kirby said.
The deployment of the U.S. troops to Poland and Romania is separate from the mission of NATO’s rapid response force. The Pentagon issued standby orders, putting another 8,500 troops on “high alert” for possible deployment as the U.S. contingent of the 40,000-member NATO strike force. Those troops have yet to receive orders to ship out, officials said.
Other countries, including Britain, France, Denmark and Belgium, also are sending troops and military assets to NATO’s eastern flank as a show of force to Russia.
In one slight but symbolic move, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that Biden officials were no longer warning of an “imminent” Russian military move into Ukraine as the diplomatic back-and-forth proceeds. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week offered a rare direct criticism of Washington, saying the war talk was unduly panicking his country and making a resolution of the crisis harder.
“I think [the word ‘imminent’] sent a message that we weren’t intending to send, which was that we knew that President Putin had made a decision,” Ms. Psaki said.
Staying in Belarus
On yet another front in the crisis, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that Russian troops sent to Belarus for joint military exercises close to the Ukrainian border would be in the country at least through Feb. 20.
The deployment and the exercise have exacerbated U.S. and NATO fears that Moscow is putting forces on three sides of neighboring Ukraine in preparation for military action against the former Soviet republic.
The Russian Defense Ministry outlined a two-stage military exercise for participating Belarusian and Russian forces.
Starting Feb. 9, the two militaries will “practice protecting and defending vital state and military facilities and protecting the state border in the airspace and checking the preparedness and capability of air defense quick reaction alert forces for accomplishing the tasks of shielding vital facilities,” a statement said.
After that, a series of “Union Resolve 2022” joint drills will run through Feb. 20, when troops “will practice fighting and repelling external aggression, countering terrorism and protecting the interests” of the Belarusian-Russian union state.
The Kremlin has insisted on its right to deploy its troops anywhere inside Russian territory or on the territory of willing allies. The joint exercises will take place at five training grounds and four airfields in western Belarus, near the borders with Ukraine and NATO members Poland and Lithuania.
The decision to hold the exercises at such a fraught time is particularly concerning to NATO, military strategists say.
“Basing troops in Belarus provides Russia with one particularly important logistical advantage,” Brian Whitmore, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote last month as preparations for the exercises had begun.
“It gives Moscow the ability to reach Kyiv, which is just [54 miles] from the Belarusian border, without crossing the Dnipro River. Military analysts fear that if the Kremlin launches simultaneous offensives from the north, south and east, such a multipronged attack could severely stretch Ukraine’s defenses.”
• Jeff Mordock contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
