NEW YORK, February 2. /TASS/. US President Joe Biden has approved additional American military deployments to Eastern Europe "in the coming days," CNN reported on Wednesday, citing US officials.
Roughly 2,000 US troops will deploy to Poland and "an additional few thousand" to southeastern NATO countries, including Romania. The Pentagon is expected to officially announce that "thousands of additional US troops will deploy to forward locations in Europe," the sources told CNN.
Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby earlier said that the United States was ready to send 8,500 troops to Europe but a final decision had not been made yet. He specified that the deployments would include combat, reconnaissance, aviation, medical and transport units. He added that the United States was not planning to deploy troops in Europe outside the territory of its NATO allies. Biden said in a talk with journalists on Friday that he would be moving the troops to Eastern Europe "in the near term."
The West and Kiev have recently been spreading allegations about Russia’s potential ‘invasion’ of Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov castigated these claims as "empty and unfounded," serving as a ploy to escalate tensions, pointing out that Russia did not pose any threat whatsoever to anyone. However, Peskov did not rule out the possibility of provocations aimed at justifying such allegations and warned that attempts to use military force to resolve the crisis in southeastern Ukraine would have very serious consequences.