Vice President Kamala Harris met with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and Eastern European heads of state at the Munich Security Conference early Friday.

This week has seen a flurry of new activity as NATO and its allies seek to forestall a fresh Russian push into Ukraine. “I think there are a lot of unknowns about what’s really going to happen,” the official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss a sensitive issue, adding that any large flood of Ukrainians fleeing the fighting would be up to the Polish government and European Union to handle, and “we would have to be asked to do that.”Īustin addressed the issue in Warsaw on Friday, saying “if Russia further invades Ukraine, Poland could see tens of thousands of displaced Ukrainians and others flowing across its border, trying to save themselves and their families from the scourge of war.” military official told POLITICO that the American role in Poland is “pretty limited” and focused on training with the Polish military and assisting and processing any American citizens who might flee any fighting in Ukraine. The Biden administration has deployed about 5,000 more troops to Poland over the past two weeks, bolstering the 4,000 troops already there, while dispatching two Stryker brigades based in Germany to Romania and Bulgaria.Ī U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Michael Carpenter, upped Washington’s assessment of the force Russia has built up along Ukraine’s border, saying between 169,000 and 190,000 troops “are in and near Ukraine as compared with about 100,000 on January 30.” The package is another piece in Poland’s sweeping military modernization effort, coming on top of a $6.5 billion deal Poland forged in 2019 to buy 32 F-35 fighter planes, and other agreements to buy mobile rocket artillery systems from the United States. The eventual delivery “will also strengthen our interoperability with the Polish armed forces, boosting the credibility of our combined deterrence efforts and those of our other NATO Allies.”

Us military buys tanks from tokyo