The first of 2,000 soldiers to arrive in Europe following the Pentagon’s announcement of additional forces to back NATO members on the continent were pictured arriving on Sunday
Image: defense visual information distribution service)
A squadron of elite soldiers from the US has arrived close to the Ukrainian border as concerns of a Russian invasion continue to grow.
The first of 2,000 soldiers to arrive in Europe following the Pentagon’s announcement of additional forces to back Nato members on the continent were pictured touching down on Sunday.
The XVIII Airborne Corps will provide a Joint Task Force-capable headquarters in Germany, as 1,700 Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division deploy to Poland.
More than 100 members of Britain’s elite special forces have been sent to Ukraine this week.
Crack troops from the SAS, the SBS, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and the Special Forces Support group are understood to be working in the country as military advisers.
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They are believed to be helping train Ukrainian special forces in counter-insurgency tactics, sniping and sabotage.
A Stryker squadron of around 1,000 US service members based in Vilseck, Germany would be sent to Romania, it was announced this week.
Three hundred other service members will move from Fort Bragg to Germany.
US President Joe Biden said the deployment was consistent with what he had told Russian President Vladimir Putin: “As long as he is acting aggressively we’re going to make sure we can reassure our Nato allies and Eastern Europe that we’re there,” according to media reports on Twitter.
On Wednesday The Mirror met the commander of Ukraine’s Army Oleksandr Syrskyi, a four-star general, at an air-strip outside Kyiv.
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He told us how Ukraine was defending against the growing Russian threat from its eastern flank, where there are 126,000 Russian troops and Belarus to the north, where there are 80,000 including Russian and local forces.
He said: “History shows that they may take any kind of action and carry out any provocation and we are ready for anything.
“But we keep up with our ceasefire regime in order to prevent any provocation.”
He stressed Ukraine’s forces are being shelled and shot at daily along the 250-mile trench frontier between his soldiers and pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow’s regular forces.
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On Friday China joined with Russia in opposing further NATO expansion in the face of Western pressure.
Moscow and Beijing issued a statement showingcasing their agreement on a raft of issues during a visit by Russia’s Vladimir Putin for the Winter Olympics.
Putin, who has written that Russians and Ukrainians are “one nation”, has demanded that Ukraine be barred from joining Nato.
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