US President Joe Biden may have accidentally revealed that the US military is training Ukrainian troops in Poland.
Biden was trying to justify what he said while addressing US troops in Poland on Friday last week: “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see — you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle — in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground.’”
There was a rumor that the White House will be sending the military to Poland. The official at the House made it clear while talking to NY Post that “the president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”
While in an interview with a correspondent from Fox News, Biden made it clear that he was misunderstood.
“I was talking to the troops. We were talking about helping train the troops in — that are — the Ukrainian troops that are in Poland,” he said. “That’s what the context [was]. I sat there with those guys for a couple hours. That’s what we talked about.”
“So when you said, ‘You’re going to see when you’re there,’ you were not intending to send US troops?” Doocy asked.
“I was referring to with — being with and talking with the Ukrainian troops who are in Poland,” the president insisted.
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield tried to shoot down that claim Tuesday, telling reporters: “The troops that he met with in Poland routinely interact with Ukrainians. That is something that’s known …That is in no way revealing compromised information. That being said, there’s nothing further that I have to say on that beyond what the president said yesterday.”
Biden was reportedly alluding to US troops instructing Ukrainians on how to use tactical weapons given by Western countries to assist them in fighting Russian forces, according to CNN.
“There are Ukrainian soldiers in Poland interacting on a regular basis with US troops, and that’s what the president was referring to,” a White House official told the cable network.
The US troops are providing instruction in the use of Javelin anti-tank missiles as the Ukrainians pick up the equipment at a military post in Poland, but the encounters do not amount to “formalized” training, according to the official.
At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Tod D. Wolters stated that the US is not “actively training military forces in Ukraine.”
“There are liaisons that are there giving advice, and that’s different than I think what you’re referring to with respect to training,” Wolters told Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
“As I said, there is regular interaction between Ukrainian soldiers in Poland and the US troops that the president saw on the trip,” Bedingfield reiterated at the White House. “There’s nothing — no further detail that I can add on that, except to say that there is regular interaction. As you saw, we were there near the border, and there’s regular interaction between those troops that he saw and Ukrainians.”
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