{"id":3047,"date":"2022-03-30T06:49:03","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T06:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/president-biden-appears-to-reveal-us-troops-training-ukrainian-forces-in-poland-new-york-post\/"},"modified":"2022-03-30T06:49:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T06:49:03","slug":"president-biden-appears-to-reveal-us-troops-training-ukrainian-forces-in-poland-new-york-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/30\/president-biden-appears-to-reveal-us-troops-training-ukrainian-forces-in-poland-new-york-post\/","title":{"rendered":"President Biden appears to reveal US troops training Ukrainian forces in Poland – New York Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

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President Biden appeared to let slip Monday that US troops are training Ukrainian forces<\/a> in Poland \u2014 contradicting his national security adviser and creating more confusion about the 82nd Airborne\u2019s 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<\/a>: \u201cYou\u2019re going to see when you\u2019re there, and some of you have been there, you\u2019re gonna see \u2014 you\u2019re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle \u2014 in front of a damned tank just saying, \u2018I\u2019m not leaving, I\u2019m holding my ground.’\u201d
The suggestion that the\u00a0US military would soon be in Ukraine led a\u00a0White House official\u00a0to\u00a0quickly\u00a0tell\u00a0The Post that \u201cthe president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.\u201d
On Monday, under questioning from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, Biden insisted he had been misunderstood.
\u201cI was talking to the troops. We were talking about helping train the troops in \u2014 that are \u2014 the Ukrainian troops that are in Poland,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what the context [was]. I sat there with those guys for a couple hours. That\u2019s what we talked about.\u201d
\u201cSo when you said, \u2018You\u2019re going to see when you\u2019re there,\u2019 you were not intending to send US troops?\u201d Doocy asked.
\u201cI was referring to with \u2014 being with and talking with the Ukrainian troops who are in Poland,\u201d the president insisted.
It was not immediately clear whether Biden misspoke or misused the word \u201ctrain\u201d 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\u00a0classified US program\u00a0in a public setting.
\u201cIt may be that he\u2019s explaining secrets on national television,\u201d Cruz told<\/a> Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity Monday evening. \u201cEvery time he explains one thing, it gets worse and worse and worse, and we\u2019ve got nuclear weapons pointed at each other. It is incredibly dangerous, this kind of presidential weakness.\u201d
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<\/a> that\u00a0\u201cwe do not have US troops currently training Ukrainians.”
On Tuesday,\u00a0CNN reported that Biden<\/a>\u00a0was referring to guidance US troops are giving Ukrainians on\u00a0how to use\u00a0the tactical weapons being sent by Western countries to assist them in battling Russian\u00a0forces.
\u201cThere are Ukrainian soldiers in Poland interacting on a regular basis with US troops, and that\u2019s 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.)<\/a> 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 \u2014 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\u2019s military\u00a0in weapons and equipment handling\u00a0as 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\u2019s border to bolster the presence of NATO troops and counter the Russian military buildup.
\u201cThe 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,\u201d Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing on Feb. 14.
The Pentagon referred requests from The Post for clarification on the president\u2019s Monday remarks to the National Security Council, which didn\u2019t 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 \u201ccannot remain in power.\u201d
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: \u201cI\u2019m not walking anything back.\u201d
\u201cI was expressing just what I said,\u201d the president attempted to explain. \u201cI was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward this man. I wasn\u2019t articulating a policy change.\u201d
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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 \u2014 contradicting his national security adviser and creating more confusion about the 82nd Airborne\u2019s mission in Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Biden was trying to clarify remarks he made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3047"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}