Senator Alexei Pushkov commented on the evening of Wednesday, July 29, the statement of the head of the Pentagon Mark Esper about plans to transfer part of the military to the borders of Russia and the possible future deployment of additional military forces in Poland and the Baltic countries.
“The transfer of these troops to Poland and the Baltic countries would be in violation of the Russia-NATO Founding Act of 1997. This would be a dangerous provocation,” Pushkov wrote on Twitter.
Regarding the withdrawal from Germany with a total complexity of 12 thousand US military, the senator expressed the opinion that this “will not affect the weight of Berlin in Europe, no matter what the US thinks.” According to him, “this weight is determined by others.”
The 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act contains an explicit ban on the permanent deployment of significant armed forces and weapons of the alliance in the territory of the Eastern European countries that joined the bloc after 1997.
On July 29, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced the withdrawal of 11,900 American servicemen from Germany.
About 6.4 thousand of them will return to their homeland, and the rest will relocate to Italy and Belgium. The US Secretary of Defense noted that in the future, Washington may deploy additional military forces in Poland and the Baltic countries. The withdrawal of troops from Germany will take several weeks, he said.