Around 3,500 US troops have arrived in Poland, one of the largest deployments of US forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War in 1991, sparking immediate anger from Russia.

The contingent of US troops, which arrived in Poland from Germany on Thursday along with hundreds of military vehicles, is part of a larger NATO operation to 'deter Russian aggression.'

The American troops will spend about a month training in Poland before moving to other NATO member states in Eastern Europe for additional training exercises.

The Pentagon operation, dubbed Atlantic Resolve mission, will involve an armored brigade and heavy equipment deployed in Poland and nearby NATO partners Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania on a rotational basis.

Outgoing US President Barack Obama ordered the deployment in 2014 to reassure NATO allies in Eastern Europe after Russia’s alleged intervention in Ukraine's crisis.

But the mission comes a week ahead of the inauguration of incoming US President Donald Trump, who has suggested his future administration will seek to resolve tensions with Moscow.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the NATO operation threatens Russia’s “interests and our security.”

“This is even more pronounced when a third party (the United States) reinforces its military presence on our doorstep in Europe,” he added.

Alexei Meshkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said the deployment is a “factor destabilizing European security.”

The US and its allies have been at odds with Moscow since Ukraine's strategic Black Sea peninsula of Crimea joined Russia following a referendum in March 2014.

Since then, the European Union, the US and some other Western countries have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russia.

NATO also cut ties with Moscow in 2014 and started to deploy troops and weaponry to Baltic States—Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia—near Russia. – Press TV. </s> OLSZYNA, Poland - US troops and tanks began arriving in Poland Thursday, part of one of the largest deployments of US forces in Europe since the Cold War that will eventually involve more than 3,000 soldiers.

The Pentagon operation sparked immediate anger from Russia, with the Kremlin describing it as a “threat” on its “doorstep.”

The Atlantic Resolve mission will see an armoured brigade with more than 3,000 Amercian soldiers and heavy equipment deployed in Poland and nearby NATO partners Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary on a rotational basis.

The outgoing Obama administration ordered the deployment in 2014 to reassure eastern allies after Russia’s actions in Ukraine. But the operation comes a week ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has suggested his Republican administration will seek to ease tensions with the Kremlin.

A contingent of US troops entered Poland at the Olszyna border crossing with Germany on Thursday.

Heavy equipment, including 87 Abrams tanks and over 500 personnel carriers including military-equipped Humvees were to follow.

“This operation threatens our interests and our security,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. “This is even more pronounced when a third party (the United States) reinforces its military presence on our doorstep in Europe,” he added.

Russian deputy foreign minister Alexei Mechkov described the deployment as a “factor destabilising European security.”

Last summer, NATO leaders also endorsed plans to rotate troops into Poland and the three Baltic states to reassure them they would not be left in the lurch if Russia was tempted to repeat its 2014 Ukraine intervention.

A separate US-led battalion working within the NATO framework will be stationed near Poland’s north-east border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.

Moscow has stepped up its presence in the Baltic Sea area over the last two years. Its jets regularly violate the airspace of smaller ex-Soviet NATO allies like Estonia and in April they even buzzed a US naval destroyer.

Late last year, Poland criticised Moscow’s deployment of nuclear-capable Iskander missiles into its Kaliningrad outpost that borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania. </s> Some 3,000 U.S. troops, under a NATO banner, are arriving in Poland and six other Eastern European countries in what a Kremlin spokesman calls a threat to Russia’s interest and security.

The deployment, which includes more than 80 main battle tanks and hundreds of armored vehicles, is part of NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve, which was launched in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The operation, representing the largest U.S. military reinforcement of Europe in decades, calls for a unit rotation every nine months.

The armored brigade combat team, based in Colorado, arrived in Germany last week. The group is gathering at a NATO and Polish base in Wrocław, in southwest Poland, before fanning out to six other NATO countries in the Russian neighborhood, including the former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that any country would regard a buildup of foreign military presence near its borders negatively.

“This is precisely the way we see it,” he said, Russia’s TASS news agency reported. “We interpret this as a threat to us and as actions that endanger our interests and our security.”

U.S. concern over possible Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, as well as the Baltics, was underscored by a visit last week to the former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — now NATO allies — by three U.S. senators, including John McCain, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The three also visited a former military post in Ukraine.

The reinforcements in Poland, a former member of the Warsaw Pact, come less than two weeks before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has indicated he will likely pursue warmer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said this week that Poland did not want to block closer U.S. ties with Russia “provided that this does not happen at our expense,” Radio Poland reported.

Russia, in its own saber-rattling gesture, recently deployed nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, the sliver of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania. </s> A senior NATO official on Friday called Washington's deployment of an armored brigade to Poland and other eastern allies a "proportionate and measured" response to Russian military activity near the region.

"Through the so-called Atlantic Resolve operation there is U.S. armor coming back to Europe and it is a response to what Russia has been doing," NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller told the Baltic news agency BNS.

U.S. troops and tanks began streaming into Poland Thursday as part of one of the largest deployments of U.S. forces in Europe since the Cold War, an operation that Russia angrily branded a security "threat."

"I do want to emphasize that it is proportionate and measured," Gottemoeller said of the deployment of some "3,500 personnel, 87 tanks and 144 Bradley fighting vehicles."

"This is an important step, but it is meant for deterrence and defense," she added.

The Atlantic Resolve mission will see US soldiers and heavy equipment also deployed in NATO partners Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary on a rotational basis.

Tensions between Russia and the West have escalated over the past two years, triggered by Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its military campaign in Syria since late 2015.

Also last year, Moscow's deployment of nuclear-capable Iskander missiles into its Kaliningrad outpost and frequent military drills in the Baltic region rattled neighboring NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

Gottemoeller said she saw "legitimate possibilities for future dialogue" between NATO and Russia, but insisted the Western alliance needed to be very "clear-eyed" about reducing risks on its eastern flank.

"We want to reduce risks so that we do not have a possibility of a crisis emerging that could possibly escalate into conflict," the NATO official told BNS speaking on the sidelines of an informal security policy summit in Lithuania.

Last summer, NATO leaders endorsed plans to rotate troops into Poland and the three Baltic states to reassure them they would not be left in the lurch if Russia was tempted to repeat its Ukraine intervention.

The former top U.S. general in Europe told AFP on Friday that dialogue with Russia was "inevitable" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, but recommended taking small steps.

"What we need to do is begin a series of dialogues and address small incremental things that we see as mutually beneficial," said retired general Philip Breedlove, who was also attending the security conference in the resort town of Trakai on the outskirts of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

"If we have success... then we move on to something a little more challenging," Breedlove said. </s> The Kremlin has responded to Poland’s Monday offer to the United States in order for the latter to have a permanent military presence in the European country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday the move would undermine stability on the continent.

"It depends what kind of base it will be. In general, when we noticed the gradual expansion of NATO's military infrastructure towards our borders, the immediate approach of NATO's military structure to our borders does not in any way contribute to security and stability on the continent, on the contrary, these expansionist actions, of course, inevitably lead to counter-measures on the Russian side in order to balance the parity that breaks each time," Peskov said, Sputnik News reported.

As a member of NATO, the U.S. through the Atlantic Resolve demonstrates its commitment to the security of NATO allies — Poland being one. The operation involves conducting continuous, enhanced multinational training and security cooperation activities with allies and partners in Eastern Europe. This affords U.S. troops to be present in Poland, although currently, they rotate between Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

According to Russia’s largest news agency, TASS, the U.S.’ armored brigade with regard to Atlantic Resolve consists about 3,500 troops, 400 track vehicles, 900 military vehicles, including 87 Abrams tanks and 18 Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzers.

On May 24, the U.S. Senate asked “the Secretary of Defense to report on the feasibility and advisability of permanently stationing a U.S. Army brigade combat team in Poland.”

Poland offered up to $2 billion to the U.S. to establish a military base permanently, quoting comments “U.S. President Donald Trump made clear in his landmark Warsaw address.” The address being referred to in a proposal from Poland's Ministry of National Defence was of the trip Trump made when he visited the country in July 2017.

“This continent no longer confronts the specter of communism. But today we’re in the West, and we have to say there are dire threats to our security and to our way of life. You see what’s happening out there. They are threats. We will confront them. We will win. But they are threats,” the president said.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy head of the Russian Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told RBC business portal that “Poland becomes the object of a retaliatory strike by placing the base.” Dzhabarov, who is a senator, warned such a move “makes Poland one of the main targets in case of a possible conflict.”

“The closer they get to NATO, the more endangered Poland’s very existence becomes,” Dzhabarov told the publication (in Russian), the Moscow Times reported.

During his visit to Poland on Monday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg again reiterated his call for Moscow to accept responsibility for the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Russia was accused by the Netherlands and Australia for the tragedy which killed all 298 passengers onboard. Stoltenberg said this “more assertive” Russia is one of NATO’s biggest security challenges.

"I agree with the Dutch government, which calls on Russia to take responsibility for the crash," Stoltenberg said, calling the tragedy a “direct consequence” of Russian aggression towards Ukraine. </s> Warsaw will officially welcome the arrival of 3,500 US troops to Poland as part of a Nato military build-up on the bloc’s eastern wall, a move attacked as a provocation by Moscow.

On Saturday, Polish prime minister Beata Szydlo and defence minister Antoni Macierewicz will meet the troops, part of Nato’s Operation Atlantic Resolve, at their new base in the western Polish town of Zagan.

Nato leaders said the deployments, agreed at recent summits, are a response to the Russian stand-off with Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea. Russia has protested that the largest such deployment in peacetime breaches agreements Nato made with Russia following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.

Last week some 2,500 items of military equipment arrived in Germany and have since been moved in transports across the continent. These include tanks, artillery vehicles and military helicopters. Some 1,000 will be stationed in Poland.

At its Warsaw summit last year, Nato members agreed to deploy to its eastern flank four rotating multinational battalions of some 1,000 soldiers each. Germany, Canada and Britain are sending battalions to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The US will deploy to the region an additional armoured brigade that is usually based in Fort Carson, Colorado.

The arrival of Nato troops in Zagan, 120km from the western border with Germany, was decried as an aggressive step in Moscow, 1,800km away.

“We perceive it as a threat,” said Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman. “These actions threaten our interests, our security. Especially as it concerns a third party building up its military presence near our borders.”

Poland shares no direct border with Russia, though the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad – formerly Königsberg – is located between Poland and Lithuania.

Nervousness in Poland and the Baltic countries about Russia’s intentions in its former sphere of influence has prompted years of lobbying from Nato’s newer members for greater military support in the region.

But their long-sought show of support, moved forward into the last days of the Obama administration, comes with a caveat: Will president-elect Donald Trump will maintain the commitment?

In his election campaign, Mr Trump questioned US Nato commitments in Europe, in particular towards members who fail to meet the alliance’s minimum defence spending requirements of 2 per cent of gross domestic product.

In 2015, Poland boosted its spending by almost a fifth to reach the 2 per cent commitment. Estonia also meets the Nato spending commitment, according to World Bank figures, while Lithuania and Latvia spend 1.1 per cent of GDP.

Brig Gen Timothy McGuire, head of US forces in Europe, said the deployment was a show of Nato “strength and cohesion” in Russia’s direction. “The best way to maintain the peace is through preparation,” he said last week. </s> (Fox News) Thousands of U.S. troops crept up on Russia’s doorstep Thursday, rolling into Poland amid a slew of unanswered questions about their future in the region.

It marked the first deployment of armored brigade combat teams and armor to Europe after a long drawdown from the continent. For decades, Poland had asked for help in keeping Moscow at bay, but at the same time, President-elect Donald Trump has signaled he could try to pursue a friendly relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Still, the president-elect said Wednesday nothing was off the table. “I don’t know that I’m going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there’s a good chance I won’t.”

Russia clearly wasn’t happy with the deployment. “We perceive it as a threat,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “These actions threaten our interests, our security, especially as it concerns a third party building up its military presence near our borders.”

Moscow also announced it deployed anti-aircraft missile systems around the city. Russia had already been using the s-400 Triumph air defense system, capable of hitting moving targets including missiles and planes, in Syria, The Sun reported.

Soldiers in camouflage with tanks and other vehicles crossed into southwestern Poland on Thursday morning from Germany and headed for Zagan, their planned base. Poland’s prime minister and defense minister said they would attend official ceremonies Saturday celebrating the Americans’ arrival.

The deployment “symbolizes a turn in our efforts on this front, and is an important part of our continued effort to deter Russian aggression and maintain a free Europe,” U.S. European Command spokeswoman Meghan Henderson responded.

U.S. and other Western nations have carried out exercises on NATO’s eastern flank, but this deployment — which includes around 3,500 U.S. troops — marks the first-ever continuous deployment to the region by a NATO ally. It represents a commitment by President Barack Obama to protect a region that became deeply nervous when Russia stormed Ukraine and took over Crimea in 2014, and then began backing rebels in Ukraine’s east.

The deployment was “separate yet complementary to NATO’s deterrence and defense activities,” Henderson added.

Many people in Poland said they still felt betrayed by Obama’s own “reset” with Russia early on in his administration, which involved abandoning plans for a major U.S. missile defense system in Poland and replacing it with plans for a less ambitious system.

Many U.S. soldiers said they were optimistic. “Hopefully we can get right into training, get some range time in and have some fun,” Spc. Kyle Smith, an infantryman with the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, told Stars and Stripes. </s> WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's defense minister said Monday that he has held talks with U.S. officials about having thousands of American troops permanently stationed as a deterrent in Poland.

Poland is concerned for its own and the region's security following Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and other steps seen as hostile.

Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said he recently held talks in Washington about having a permanent presence of U.S. troops in Poland, where they are currently on a rotational, temporary, though open-ended mission.

"The result of our efforts is that the U.S. Senate has contacted the Pentagon about an assessment of ... (the) permanent presence of U.S. troops in Poland," Blaszczak said on state Radio 1. "Such presence is of great importance because it deters the adversary."

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that an increase in the West's military presence near Russia's borders "certainly does not contribute to security and stability on the continent in any way."

"On the contrary, these expansionist steps, certainly, result in counteractions of the Russian side to balance the parity which is violated every time this way," Peskov said, according to Russian news agency Tass.

The Onet.pl news portal says Poland is seeking the permanent deployment of a U.S. armored division and is offering up to $2 billion to help build the infrastructure. It says the defense ministry has written to U.S. politicians and the U.S. Congress with details of the proposal.

The ministry's press office confirmed to The Associated Press that such a document has been forwarded but declined to give more details.

Other countries in the region would also like to see U.S. land forces stationed permanently in their area, Blaszczak said last week.

U.S. and NATO troops were deployed to Poland and the region last year as a security assurance. </s> The arrival of thousands of US soldiers in Poland as part of a NATO build-up is a threat to Russia's national security, the Kremlin has said.

The mission, one of the largest deployments of US forces in Europe since the Cold War, will eventually see more than 3,000 troops and heavy equipment deployed in Poland and other nearby NATO partners on a rotational basis.

"This operation threatens our interests and our security," Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, said in a statement on Thursday.



"This is even more pronounced when a third party [US] reinforces its military presence on our doorstep in Europe."

READ MORE: US tanks arrive in Germany for NATO mission in Europe

The Atlantic Resolve mission, agreed on at a NATO 2016 summit, was ordered by outgoing President Barack Obama's administration to calm US allies in Europe after Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.

Russian actions alarmed the Baltic states, which worry they could be the next targets of Russian pressure and intervention as Moscow has increased its presence in the Baltic Sea area over the past two years.

The operation comes a week before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, who has announced that his Republican administration will work to ease tensions with the Kremlin amid concern over accusations of Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections.

Alexei Mechkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, described the deployment as a "factor destabilising European security".

The first of the arriving troops, reportedly from Fort Carson, Colorado, will be followed with more than 3,000 soldiers, tanks and other military equipment deployed in Poland via Germany and nearby NATO partners.

Among their equipment will be 87 Abrams M1A1 tanks, 20 Paladin artillery vehicles and 136 Bradley fighting vehicles.

The forces will branch out to seven Eastern European countries from Estonia to Bulgaria on a rotational basis within the next two weeks.

In addition to US troops, NATO members Germany, Canada and Britain are also sending up to 1,000 troops, each to the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The arrival of the troops will be announced in official ceremonies on Saturday.
3,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Poland as part of NATO's Operation Atlantic Resolve. Poland says that the deployment is a necessary response to Russian military exercises near its border and its intervention in Ukraine while Russia condemns the move as a "threat to national interests and security".