First of 3,000 troops and armored vehicles fill bases after China backed Putin in NATO spat

  • The U.S. is sending 2,000 troops to Eastern Europe and repositioning an additional 1,000
  • Wheeled Stryker combat vehicles and other equipment has been shipped to Poland
  • Russia and China issued joint statement opposing NATO expansion after Vladimir Putin’s meeting with President Xi JinpingĀ 
  • Military transport aircraft carrying U.S. soldiers and equipment also were seen landing in Poland
  • Russian conducted joint military exercises with BelarusĀ 

U.S. paratroopers, armored vehicles and jets arrived in Poland on Friday as part of the deployment of 3,000 troops into Eastern Europe in a major show of force to try to deter Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.

Some of the lethal military equipment the U.S. is moving into Eastern Europe was on display, as the military positions the first troops meant to shore upĀ NATOĀ allies amidĀ Russia‘s continuing troop buildup along the Ukrainian border.

More than 200 pieces of equipment including wheeled Stryker combat vehicles from the Army National Guard 1st Battalion, 185th Infantry regiment could be seen being unloaded at the port of Gdyna in Poland Friday, while soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division began arriving.

The U.S. is sending 2,000 troops from the U.S. to Poland andĀ Germany, where military already maintains a substantial presence, while repositioning another 1,000 troops to Romania.

The troops join roughly 4,000 that are already stationed in various parts of Poland, including hundreds of soldiers that are supporting aĀ NATOĀ mission, 50 miles from Russian-controlledĀ Kaliningrad.

Military transport aircraft carrying U.S. soldiers and equipment also were seen landing in Poland.

The administration has insisted the troops are not escalatory and are meant to reassure NATO allies the U.S. is sworn to defend under Article V of the NATO treaty, which President Biden calls a ‘sacred obligation.’

The Pentagon has also putĀ 8,500 troops on alert in the U.S. for possible deployments.

There are currently about 4,500 U.S. troops in Poland under a bilateral and NATO structure.

Russia has called the new deployments ‘destructive,’ even while amassing more than 100,000 of its own troops around Ukraine.

Russian forces carried out war games in Belarus, to Ukraine’s north, on Friday, with an estimated 30,000 troops taking part in joint Russia-Belarus exercises this month.

But there were still prospects for diplomacy, with Russian diplomats still engaged with U.S. and western negotiators over its security demands.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday, where they signed a joint statement calling on the west to ‘abandon the ideologized approaches of the Cold War.’ Xi also declared his opposition to NATO expansion in the joint statement. Putin has been seeking assurances that the U.S. would not bring in Ukraine as a member nation on its western border.

‘The parties oppose the further expansion of NATO, call on the North Atlantic alliance to abandon the ideologized approaches of the cold war, respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilizational and cultural-historical patterns, and treat the peaceful development of other states objectively and fairly,’ according to the statement.

China said it ‘understands and supports the proposals put forward by the Russian Federation on the formation of long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe.

It also registered opposition to U.S. trade alliances in the region.

If Putin is gearing up for war, he wasn’t showing it during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, where he appeared to fall asleep.