WARSAW — President Biden met with U.S. troops primarily based in Poland on Friday, thanking them for serving as a really seen deterrent to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose forces invaded Ukraine — on Poland’s border — a month in the past.
Mr. Biden has been specific in his vow that the US navy won’t set foot in Ukraine, the place they may very well be drawn into direct battle with Russian troops and doubtlessly set off a wider, extra harmful world conflict between nuclear-armed powers.
However he has additionally promised that the US will honor its obligations to defend any NATO nation from aggression. Ukraine will not be a member of the 30-member European defensive alliance — however Poland is.
Mr. Biden visited a few dozen service members from the 82nd Airborne Division at a barber store on the G2A Enviornment close to the Rzeszow airport, about 50 miles from the border with Ukraine. He greeted three males sitting in chairs within the entrance of the room, noting their very quick hair and telling them, “You guys will need to have simply gotten your hair lower!”
When one of many service members prompt that the president ought to end the haircut, Mr. Biden laughed and mentioned that was the very last thing the younger man would need.
A couple of minutes later, Mr. Biden joined a bunch of service members consuming pizza in a cafeteria. He referred to as them “the best combating drive within the historical past of the world” and added, “I personally thanks for what you do.” He instructed a quick story about being in Iraq together with his deceased son, Beau Biden, who was a serious within the Delaware Military Nationwide Guard, after which sat all the way down to eat pizza with them.
Within the run-up to the Russian invasion, Mr. Biden despatched greater than 5,500 further troops to bolster the navy presence on NATO’s jap flank and to ship a message to Mr. Putin that he mustn’t think about any direct navy motion in opposition to a member of the alliance.
On the identical time, a part of the deployment was supposed to assist Polish officers put together for what they anticipated can be a surge of refugees throughout the border if Russia made good on its menace to invade.
The truth is, the mass migration was bigger and occurred extra rapidly that almost all officers had predicted. Members of the 82nd have spent the final a number of weeks serving to with humanitarian efforts, at the same time as they labored with Polish forces to boost the nation’s protection.