Nearly 5,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division are now in Poland in response to the Russian deployments on Ukraine’s borders.
WASHINGTON — The last of nearly 5,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Poland on Thursday, Pentagon officials said, providing reassurance to a pivotal NATO ally and expertise in assisting with the possible evacuation of Americans and others should Russia invade Ukraine.
The Pentagon reiterated that the troops would not enter Ukraine but could help the Polish government deal with the possible influx of people fleeing over the border if there is a war.
Another 1,000 American troops — a Stryker squadron from the Army’s Second Cavalry Regiment — are moving from Germany to Romania, and should be in place by Saturday, a U.S. military official said. The Air Force has sent more than a dozen additional fighter jets to Eastern Europe in recent days to bolster aerial defenses there.
The reinforcements would more than double the number of American ground troops in the two countries — to roughly 9,000 in Poland and nearly 2,000 in Romania — putting U.S. soldiers and Russian troops in perhaps the closest proximity outside of drills in years.
President Biden has said U.S. troops will not fight in Ukraine, but rushing the American air and land reinforcements to NATO’s eastern flank aims to deter any possible Russian aggression and reassure nervous allies that Washington has their backs, officials said.
“The troops that we have added to the already 80,000 that are based in Europe are going to reassure our allies and our partners to deter aggression against the alliance to conduct some joint training,” John F. Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, told reporters this week.
Besides any symbolic value, the 82nd Airborne soldiers may be thrust into the challenging job of helping Polish authorities manage possibly tens of thousands of people, including American citizens, fleeing neighboring Ukraine if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia orders his 150,000 troops massing on Ukraine’s borders to attack.
“Certainly, assistance with evacuation flow is something that they could do, and could do quite well,” Mr. Kirby said. “And they’re going to be working with Polish authorities on what that looks like, and how they would handle that.”
The Biden administration has said U.S. troops will not evacuate American citizens and residents from Ukraine itself, as the military did last August in Afghanistan, and has repeatedly urged Americans to leave the country.
The 82nd Airborne troops, from Fort Bragg, N.C., are expected to train with Polish forces at several locations around the country, said a U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements.
The Pentagon has barred reporters from embedding with these newly arrived troops. “We’re just not at a point now where we are able to provide that kind of access,” Mr. Kirby said last week.
The Pentagon announced last Friday that 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne would join 1,700 soldiers from the unit who deployed earlier to Poland. They are led by Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who was the ground commander for the evacuation at Kabul’s international airport in August.
Mr. Kirby said that while some of the Army troops may operate in eastern Poland, near the Ukrainian border, one thing is clear: “There’s no intention, there’s no plan and there’s no approval to put these troops into Ukraine. They’re being sent to Poland. They’re going to stay in Poland.”
Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine
A brewing conflict. Antagonism between Ukraine and Russia has been simmering since 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, annexing Crimea and whipping up a rebellion in the east. A tenuous cease-fire was reached in 2015, but peace has been elusive.
Last weekend, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered 150 Florida Army National Guard soldiers who had been training Ukrainian troops to exit the country “out of an abundance of caution,” Mr. Kirby said. That leaves several dozen Army Special Forces personnel and Marine Embassy guards as the last American military presence in the country.
Mr. Austin is expected to visit U.S. troops in Poland and the Baltics this week.
In addition, some 300 members of the 18th Airborne Corps headquarters, also from Fort Bragg, have arrived in Germany to oversee the reinforcements flowing into Eastern Europe. The 18th Airborne Corps and this headquarters unit are led by Lt. Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, whom Mr. Biden has nominated to take over the military’s Central Command in April. And on Thursday, Mr. Austin said 125 Army troops would go to Bulgaria from Germany for training.
The Pentagon in recent days has also dispatched aerial reinforcements to Britain, Germany and Eastern Europe. The Air Force said F-35 fighters from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, had deployed to Germany days after B-52 bombers from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., were sent to Britain in a previously planned mission.
Eight additional F-15s from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., have flown to Lask Air Base, Poland, to augment the eight American F-15s there that are usually stationed in Britain.
“The deployment of U.S. F-15s to Poland elevates the collective defense capabilities on NATO’s Eastern flank and the enhanced air policing mission,” Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa, said in a statement.
Eight F-16s usually based in Spangdahlem, Germany, have also deployed to Fetesti Air Base, Romania.
In addition to the deployments to Poland and Romania, the Pentagon has put 8,500 other troops in the United States on “high alert” for possible dispatch to Eastern Europe. Those troops would take part in a NATO response force that might soon be activated, military officials said.
