U.S. Military officials have deployed units of the nation’s most elite groups of airborne division fighters out to Europe for the first time since back in World War II, promising to step up and fight alongside the troops in Ukraine in the fight against Russian tyranny, as explained by a recent report.
This past Friday evening, a report from CBS News explained that the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, a group that has been trained from enlistment to deploy anywhere throughout the world and start fighting within hours, sent out roughly 4,700 soldiers out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to an emplacement in Romania, where the soldiers will be prepared to jump to reinforce the eastern flank of NATO at a moment’s notice.
“We’re ready to defend every inch of NATO soil,” stated Brigadier General John Lubas, the division’s Deputy Commander, to the outlet, going further to add that their presence in the area is much needed due to the group’s wholly unique light infantry force training.
“We bring that mobility to our aircraft and our air assaults,” explained Lubas.
Colloquially named the “Screamin’ Eagles,” soldiers from this division are now the closest American fighting force to the currently raging war in Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin kicked off his military campaign there earlier this past February. Since that point, Russian troops have been pushing in on the Crimean Peninsula and scaled the Black Sea coast into the Kherson region, including Mykolaiv and Odesa port cities.
“We’re closely watching them. So we’re building objectives to practice against that replicate exactly what’s going on in Ukraine,” stated the Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, Colonel Edwin Matthaidess, stated to CBS. “It keeps us on our toes.”
Both Romanian troops and U.S. Soldiers have been taking part in air assault attacks to express to Russian forces that NATO allies are fully ready to cross over in territory owned by Ukraine if called on by officials.
“The real meaning for me, to have the American troops here, is like if you were to have allies in Normandy before any enemy was there,” explained Romanian Major General Lulian Berdila to CBS News.
This choice from the U.S. to shift forces takes place in the wake of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warning Russia against any and all use of nuclear weapons within the Ukraine conflict after both of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines sustained extreme damage stemming from underwater explosions within the Baltic sea.
“All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage,” expressed NATO via a statement, as reported by Reuters. “We, as Allies, have committed to prepare for, deter and defend against the coercive use of energy and other hybrid tactics by state and non-state actors.”
“Any deliberate attack against the allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response,” the statement went on.
It was announced by the Department of the Army expressed this past summer that it would start sending out troops to the area in “support of our unrelenting commitment to Europe and our NATO allies.”