US President Biden orders 3,000 US troops to eastern Europe to counter Russia

WASHINGTON: American troops are heading out for foreign shores yet again only months after a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in a fiasco that shook Washington. US President Joe Biden on Wednesday approved deployment of about 3,000 additional American troops to Eastern Europe amid ceaseless wrangling with Russia over

Ukraine

, on whose borders Pentagon says Moscow has amassed 1,00,000 troops ready to invade the former Soviet territory.

US officials emphasised that American troops are not being deployed in Ukraine but instead will go to Poland and Romania to protect

Nato

's eastern flank. Roughly 1,000 personnel based in Germany will move to Romania, and another 2,000 will depart shortly from Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina. Of these 1,700 members from 82nd Airborne Division will go to Poland and 300 members from 18th Airborne Corps will go to Germany.

The officials maintained that the moves are not permanent, defensive in nature, and that Washington is only responding to "current conditions", while aiming to reassure Nato allies and meet US commitments to protect them. However, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said the newly deployed troops are going under bilateral arrangement with Germany, Poland, and Romania, and they will remain under US control. "I want to be very clear about something: these are not permanent moves...Moreover, these forces are not going to fight in Ukraine. They are going to ensure the robust defence of our Nato allies," Kirby said.

At a broader policy level, there is apprehension in the Biden administration that if the US does not show up in military terms, it will further embolden Russia to train its sights on other former Soviet Republics to try and reconstitute USSR 2.0, which American analysts see as Moscow's endgame. Smaller Nato deployments are also expected in Baltic Republics that were part of the former Soviet Republic and which expect Moscow to turn the heat on them after Ukraine.

Responding to Moscow's allegation that the US is being provocative by trying to rope in Ukraine into Nato, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki took to metaphors to rebut the charge, while alleging it is Russian President Vladimir Putin who has "invaded multiple countries in the past several years". "When the fox is screaming from the top of the henhouse that he's scared of the chickens, which is essentially what they're doing, that fear isn't reported as a statement of fact. We know who the fox is in this case," Psaki said.

Russia's ambassador to US Anatoly Antonov retorted that it is the US interventions that brought the world "nothing but chaos, instability and loss of lives," while excoriating Washington's "bloody experiments" to bring democracy to the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

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