The United States has 8,500 troops on standby.
It was not a formal announcement from the Oval Office, but the result of a question on the air launched by a journalist at the end of a rally in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and the usual spontaneity of Joe Biden. He wanted to know if he had decided to send troops to Eastern Europe and the president did not disappoint him: “I will send troops to Eastern Europe and NATO countries in the short term, but not many.”
The United States has 8,500 troops on standby, a dwarf number compared to the 100,000 that President Vladimir Putin has stationed on the border with Ukraine. “You have to go way back to the days of the Cold War to see something of this magnitude,” US defense secretary Lloyd Austin had clarified shortly before.
In Kiev they accuse Biden of “arsonist” for having anticipated point-blank last week “in undiplomatic language” that Russia could invade Ukraine next month. “They are creating panic,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized yesterday at a press conference. “I can’t be like other politicians, who are grateful to the United States just for being the United States,” he protested. “We are grateful to him for constantly defending our sovereignty and territorial integrity, but I am here and I know deeper details than any president.”
He did not name him, but it was clear he was referring to Biden, who was Obama’s special envoy for Ukraine after the invasion of Crimea. His generals also anticipate a “major catastrophe” if Russia enters Ukraine by force, “given the type of forces it has amassed” on the border. Heavy artillery, surface-to-air ballistic missiles, air capacity and troops surrounding Ukraine on three of its flanks.
“You can imagine the number of casualties if they activate all of that at once, particularly in high-density urban areas,” US Chief of Staff General Mark Milley speculated. “It would be terrifying, something horrible.”
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