As the “Wall Street Journal” and the “Washington Post” among others reported on Wednesday, 2,000 soldiers are to be relocated from the USA to Germany and Poland. 1,000 US soldiers already stationed in Germany are to be relocated to Romania.
US government confirms troop deployments
A US official confirmed the troop transfers in principle without naming numbers or countries. “The Department of Defense will move some European-based units further east, deploy additional US-based units to Europe, and maintain the elevated alert state of response forces.”
“Will not fight in Ukraine”
US soldiers “will not fight in Ukraine,” stressed the government representative. The troop transfers are also not permanent. Biden recently had 8,500 US soldiers put on increased alert because of the Ukraine crisis.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to ease the situation continued on Wednesday. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wanted to call Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. However, the phone call was not under a lucky star: the Russian UN diplomat Dmitri Polyanski described British diplomacy in advance as “completely worthless”.
Russian diplomat accuses West of “hysteria”.
“There’s always room for diplomacy, but frankly we don’t trust British diplomacy,” Polyansky, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told Sky News. “I really don’t want to offend anyone,” he added. The “results” of British diplomats are “really nothing to brag about”.
Polyansky accused the West of “hysteria.” There are exaggerations in the information on the number of Russian soldiers massed on the Ukrainian border, he said. “Now it’s already 130,000. You can see that inflation is very high these days, yesterday it was 100,000.”
Meanwhile, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and pledged his support on cybersecurity. Specifically, it is about specialist advice for the Eastern European country, said Rutte on Wednesday at a joint press conference with President Selenskyj.
With a massive Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, there are fears in the West that Russia is planning an invasion of its neighbor. The Kremlin denies that. It is also considered possible that fears are being fueled in order to persuade the NATO countries to make concessions on security guarantees. Moscow has addressed a corresponding list of demands to NATO and the USA, including an end to NATO’s eastward expansion. Both reject Russia’s core concerns, but have offered dialogue in written replies.
Source: Nachrichten
