US President Donald Trump expressed bewilderment as to why the United States should defend Germany from Russia. He wrote about this on his page on the social network Twitter.
The head of the White House recalled that Germany pays Russia billions of dollars for energy, and was outraged why the United States should protect the country from Moscow.
At the same time, the American leader emphasized that Berlin spends insufficient funds to maintain NATO’s collective defense.
“Germany is heavily overdue with its 2% contribution to NATO. Therefore, we are withdrawing part of the troops from Germany! ” – he wrote.
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.
According to Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov, the withdrawal of troops will not “not affect the weight of Berlin in Europe, no matter what the US thinks.”