U.S. ground troops are creating a defensive line against further Russian advances that stretches from the Baltics to the Black Sea, the brigade commander in charge of the U.S. forces assisting Ukraine said Monday.
“We’re expanding,” Col. Michael L. Foster, commander of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade.
The U.S. support of its NATO allies in Europe, known as Operation Atlantic Resolve, has grown into two distinct mission sets — Atlantic Resolve North, supporting Poland and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia; and Atlantic Resolve South, the countries of Hungary, Georgia, and the Czech Republic.Each will have U.S. troops deployed there.
The 173rd is also sending six company-sized elements, and three battalion headquarters sized elements into Ukraine to begin its defensive training for Ukrainian forces that are still under attack by Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine. A company is typically anywhere from 60 to 250 personnel.
“Stretched from the Baltics all the way to the BlackSea … you will see a line of deployed U.S. troops,” Foster said.
The deployments fall in line with a general consensus that Russia will not strike a NATO nation with U.S. ground forces and risk the escalation or higher military costs of NATO invoking Article 5 protections for the attacked country. Article 5 under NATO requires member nations to consider an attack against one NATO nation as an attack against them all.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, a fact that Russia has exploited while subversively funding the slow takeover of Ukraine’s eastern territory.
Foster spoke Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Later this spring the U.S. will begin shipping a brigade combat team’s worth of equipment to Germany to bolster the U.S. European Command. The added force will have more than 220 pieces of equipment, including M1 Abrams tanks, M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, M3 cavalry fighting vehicles and a battalion of Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzers, U.S. Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told reporters last month.
