WASHINGTON, February 11. /TASS/. Additional 3,000 US servicemen will arrive in Poland early next week, a senior US defense official told TASS on Friday.

"At the direction of the President, [US Defense] Secretary [Lloyd] Austin today ordered to Poland the remaining 3,000 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Infantry Brigade Combat Team," he said. "These troops will depart Fort Bragg over the next couple days. They are expected to be in place by early next week."

In his words, the United States made the decision to send 1,700 servicemen to Poland in early February. "Nearly two-thirds of this first tranche has already arrived," he said, adding that 300 members of the 18th Airborne Corps headquarters element that the US secretary of defense ordered to Germany have also arrived in the country.

"All told, these 5,000 additional personnel comprise a highly mobile and flexible force, capable of multiple missions. They are being deployed to reassure our NATO allies, deter any potential aggression against NATO’s eastern flank, train with host-nation forces, and contribute to a wide range of contingencies," he continued.

According to the official, these additional deployments are temporary in nature, "meant to supplement for a brief time the more than 80,000 U.S. troops already in Europe on rotational and permanent orders."

On February 2, the US authorities announced plans to deploy reinforcement troops to Romania, Poland and Germany. A total of 1,700 troops will be deployed to Poland. Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby stated that "these forces are not going to fight in Ukraine, they are going to ensure the robust defense of our NATO allies."

Concerns over Moscow's alleged preparations for an invasion into Ukraine have been increasingly announced in the west and in Kiev recently. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov castigated these statements as an empty and groundless escalation of tension, emphasizing that Russia posed no threat to anyone. At the same time, the Kremlin press secretary did not exclude some possible provocations to justify such claims and warned that the attempts to resolve the Ukrainian conflict by force would carry extremely serious consequences.