US troops and tanks began streaming into Poland on Thursday as part of one of the largest deployments of US forces in Europe since the Cold War, an operation that Russia angrily branded a “threat”.
The Atlantic Resolve mission will see more than 3,000 American soldiers and heavy equipment deployed in Poland and nearby NATO partners Estonia, latvia, lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary on a rotational basis.
The outgoing US administration of President Barack Obama ordered the deployment of an armoured brigade to the region after 2014 to reassure eastern allies after Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The operation has sparked immediate anger from Russia, with the Kremlin describing it as a “threat” on its “doorstep”.
“This is unprecedented for Poland,” Michal Baranowski, Warsaw office director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States think-tank, told AFP. “We have not had this level of a rotational presence since the Cold War.” Baranowski said the arrival of the US troops, along with NATO’s coming deployment of four multi-national battalion groups in Poland and the three Baltic states, “changes the security calculus on the alliance’s eastern flank” by creating a much-boosted deterrent.