US and Polish Defense Ministers discuss defense against " aggression from the East»
The United States confirmed its intention to increase the military contingent in Poland to protect against a "potential aggressor from the East", the head of the Polish Defense Ministry said after a telephone conversation with the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin. According to him, in Poland, if necessary, about 20 thousand American soldiers will be deployed.
The head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, in a telephone conversation with Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, discussed the extension by Moscow and Washington of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Weapons (START-3 or NewSTART).
In addition, the military in the conversation mutually confirmed "the importance of the long-standing strategic alliance between the United States and Poland" in the light of the recently signed Polish-American Agreement on expanded defense cooperation.
"The continued presence of US rotational forces in Poland increases the interoperability of NATO troops, as well as strengthens the defense and contributes to deterrence on the eastern flank of NATO," the Pentagon said in a comment.
The STCW will exist without any changes or additions, that is, in the same form in which the parties signed it in 2010, the ministry said. START-3 was extended for five years-until February 5, 2026.
The key factor for its extension, Russian diplomats called a telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joseph Biden.
Commenting on the conversation with Austin, Blaszczak in an interview with the Polish information resource Defense 24 said that the" freeze " by the White House of the decision to relocate troops from Germany will not affect the intention of the American side to increase the military contingent in Poland.
"We have never presented the issue in such a way that the increase in the presence of American troops in Poland was at the expense of Germany or any other country. The buildup of American troops in Poland is a settled issue, " the Polish minister explained.
According to him, the US military leadership will hold consultations with a number of countries, including Poland, which is "a key US ally on the eastern flank of NATO."
"The presence of American troops in Poland deters a potential aggressor, so we are ready to implement the agreement of August 15 last year, on the basis of which about 20 thousand American soldiers will be deployed in Poland, if necessary," the head of the Polish military department added.
The transfer of American troops to the east, to the borders of Russia, to help the allies in the North Atlantic Alliance in "containing" Moscow, was announced in August last year on the Fox News channel by the then head of the US military department, Mark Esper.
"Most of the allies I've talked to, or my staff have talked to, think this is a good move. The troops will complete all the tasks assigned to them. In addition, we still have more than 24,000 troops in Germany. The largest contingent of the US Armed Forces is still deployed in this country. The bottom line is that the NATO border has shifted to the east as the alliance has grown, " the Pentagon chief pointed out.
In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, NATO has steadily expanded eastward toward Russia's borders, despite former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker's commitment to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev not to deploy troops east of a unified Germany in 1990.
Since 1999, the North Atlantic Alliance has included all the members of the defunct Warsaw Pact: the three former Soviet republics and the three former Yugoslav republics, and has established defense "partnership" programs with many other countries, including Ukraine and Georgia, which involves joint training and the transfer of weapons and military equipment.
Raphael Fakhrutdinov
