After US President Joe Biden announced, on Tuesday, the sending of more troops to Eastern Europe In countries such as Estonia and Lithuania, the Pentagon revealed that orders had been issued to transfer 800 American soldiers from Italy to the Baltic region.
A US State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that the Pentagon will send up to 8 F-35 fighter jets from Germany to several work sites on the eastern NATO front.
In addition, the United States will send 32 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to the Baltic region and to Poland from locations within Europe.
As the senior US defense official explained, the deployment of these additional personnel is to reassure our NATO allies and deter any potential aggression against NATO member states as well as training with host country forces, adding that none of the new forces came from the United States.
Official confession and western anger
These moves coincided with fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would send troops to support the Donetsk and Logistics regions, east of his neighbor, who declared their independence on Monday evening, after receiving the green light from the Federation Council, which is the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. to deploy Russian armed forces in the two separatist-held areas, for what council members described as a “peacekeeping” mission.
He also said in his speech that Ukraine is not obligated to implement the Minsk agreements, declaring not to implement any part of the terms of this agreement, which has become expired, as he put it.
It is noteworthy that the Russian President announced on Monday evening, the recognition of the independence of the unilaterally declared “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and ordered Russian forces to enter them, defying Western countries whose relations with Moscow are going through the worst crisis since the Cold War due to the situation in Ukraine, which prompted The world got ready and called for an emergency session in the Security Council, in which most Western countries condemned Russia’s actions.
While this Russian recognition ends the fragile peace plan in the two mentioned regions.
It also paves the way for Moscow to push its forces into these two regions to protect hundreds of thousands of residents who obtained Russian passports years ago.