Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.
President Biden appeared to let slip Monday that US troops are training Ukrainian forces in Poland — contradicting his national security adviser and creating more confusion about the 82nd Airborne’s mission in Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Biden was trying to clarify remarks he made on Friday, when he told American forces in Poland: “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.’”
The suggestion that the US military would soon be in Ukraine led a White House official to quickly tell The Post that “the president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”
On Monday, under questioning from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, Biden insisted he had been 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.
It was not immediately clear whether Biden misspoke or misused the word “train” to describe interactions between American and Ukrainian military personnel in Poland.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) raised the possibility that Biden had revealed the existence of a classified US program in a public setting.
“It may be that he’s explaining secrets on national television,” Cruz told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Monday evening. “Every time he explains one thing, it gets worse and worse and worse, and we’ve got nuclear weapons pointed at each other. It is incredibly dangerous, this kind of presidential weakness.”
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.”
Last week, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that “we do not have US troops currently training Ukrainians.”
On Tuesday, CNN reported that Biden was referring to guidance US troops are giving Ukrainians on how to use the tactical weapons being sent by Western countries to assist them in battling Russian forces.
“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.
As the Ukrainians pick up the equipment at a military base in Poland, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, the US troops are offering instruction in their use, but the encounters do not amount to “formalized” training, the official said.
NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Tod D. Wolters told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that the US is not “currently 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.”
The US has provided $2 billion in military aid to Ukraine, but has drawn the line at putting American boots on the ground in the country, believing that their presence could escalate the war. It is not clear whether Russia would view the US training Ukraine’s military in weapons and equipment handling as a similar escalation.
The 5,000 members of the 82nd Airborne were deployed to Poland in early February as hundreds of thousands of Russian troops were stationed along Ukraine’s border to bolster the presence of NATO troops and counter the Russian military buildup.
“The president has made clear that US troops are not going to be fighting in Ukraine. The troops that we have added to the already 80,000 that are based in Europe are going to reassure our allies and our partners to deter aggression against the alliance to conduct some joint training,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing on Feb. 14.
The Pentagon referred requests from The Post for clarification on the president’s Monday remarks to the National Security Council, which didn’t immediately respond.
Biden blurted out his Monday comments as he was peppered about a Saturday speech in Warsaw during which he said Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
The White House scrambled to clarify that the president was not calling for regime change in his off-the-cuff comments near the end of a 27-minute speech.
On Monday, Biden refuted his staff, saying: “I’m not walking anything back.”
“I was expressing just what I said,” the president attempted to explain. “I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward this man. I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
Share Selection