(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) A company-size contingent of paratroopers, from the US Army Europe's 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team airborne, based in Vicenza, Italy, will arrive in Poland on Wednesday to begin exercises with Polish troops, the Pentagon announced Monday.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters that this "new exercise is the first in a series of expanded US land force training activities in Poland and the Baltic region that are scheduled to take place for the next few months and beyond." He added that "additional companies from the 173rd will move in the coming days to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia for similar exercises." He stressed that "since Russia's aggression in Ukraine, we have been constantly looking at ways to reassure allies and partners." Kirby affirmed that these exercises are bilateral, "they're between the United States and the country in question. It's not a NATO exercise.
"These are countries that we routinely operate with. These are units that the 173rd have worked with before, in all four countries. So they know each other. This isn't the first time that the 173rd has done exercises with these countries. So there's a relationship there," he noted.
He added "but these exercises were conceived and added onto the exercise regimen as a result of what's going on in Ukraine." He affirmed that the deployment is "a very tangible representation of our commitment to our security obligations in Europe." Meanwhile, Kirby reiterated that "nothing we've seen out of Moscow, nothing we've seen out of Russia or their armed forces, is de-escalating the tension, is making things any more stable in Ukraine or on the continent of Europe." He said in this regard that "what would be very helpful is if they remove their forces off that border and took concrete actions to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine.
"For our part, what we're going to do is we're going to constantly look for ways to reassure our NATO allies and our partners how seriously we take our obligations," he affirmed.
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