In Romania, US troops train near Russia

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIR BASE, Romania — Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division train, eat, and sleep at a sprawling, squalid outpost in southeastern Romania, just seven minutes missile flight from where Russia stored ammunition in Crimea.

Further north, in military exercises with Romanian troops just a few kilometers from the Ukrainian border, US soldiers, also from the 101st Division, are firing artillery, launching helicopter assaults and digging trenches similar to the front in the region near the ‘Ukraine. Cherson, the Ukrainian port city from which Russian troops withdrew in November.

It is the first time the 101st Airborne Division has been deployed to Europe since World War II, and with its presence in Romania, a member of the BORNits soldiers are now closer to war in Ukraine than any other US Army unit.

His mission is considered a model for the US military, which has just left behind two decades of active warfare and entered an era of deterrence of opponentsthrough shows of strength, training, arms shipments, and other aid.

“This is a regional conflict, but it has global implications,” said the General James C. McConvilleUS Army Chief of Staff, in a mid-December interview at the airbase, which shares a runway with an adjacent commercial airport named after former Romanian Prime Minister Mihail Kogalniceanu, near the Black Sea.

The deployment of troops in Romania is intended as a warning to Moscow, part of the president’s promise Joe Biden defend “every inch” of NATO territory without tempting the president Vladimir Putin from Russia to an escalation.

But carrying out joint maneuvers is also a way to make sure that the allies in southeastern Europe are the same prepared to hold the line.

Distribution

It is not clear what kind of US presence will be maintained at the base;

the Pentagon will soon decide whether to keep the number of US troops and senior officers there.

Some members of Congress are wary of the cost of meeting Ukraine’s continued requests for aid, and the top Republican in the House, kevin mccarthyof California, suggested in October that his party might not be willing to extend a “blank check“in Ukraine.

But advocates of maintaining a strong presence in Eastern Europe have pointed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February as evidence that the United States and its NATO allies they haven’t done enough to discourage Moscow last winter.

“This is one of the most important lessons we need to learn from Ukraine,” Democratic Representative Seth Moulton told reporters after returning from a short trip to Ukraine in early December.

“When we look at the other scenario that could develop like Ukraine, in the Pacific with China and Taiwan, we have to make sure that the deterrence is successful“.

Military planners echoed that strategy, noting that the 101st Airborne Division also used the Black Sea for coastal defense training, a useful skill if China became more aggressive and invade taiwanan autonomous island that Beijing has long claimed as its own.

The division was ordered to deploy approximately 4,000 troops and senior officers within weeks of the Russian invasion. They arrived at the air base, near the Romanian coastal city of Constanta, during the summer.

The base previously served as a sleepy training outpost for NATO troops, including several hundred US soldiers, and was known more widely within the military as way station with a small canteen for US forces heading to and from Afghanistan.

Announcements

The mission here is somewhat different from those performed elsewhere in Europe, where some US troops train Ukrainian forces in advanced weapon systems that are shipped to Ukrainians.

The division commander, Major General JP McGee, said that training with other Eastern European soldiers had been carried out its own value.

“You have the opportunity to train and operate in the same ground that you may have to defend,” McGee said.

He added: “You have to work with a NATO ally, and it’s almost unimaginable that in the future we will fight without allies”.

In addition to troops in Romania, McGee has also sent small squads of soldiers to train with NATO allies Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia.

The unit prides itself on being the closest to combat, but it’s by no means the largest:

Some 12,000 troops assigned to the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, added after the invasion, were mostly located in the western part, officials said. Poland and the Baltic.

Taken together, they represent an increase in US forces in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine, as Biden promised allies at a NATO summit in Madrid in June.

As part of military exercises with US and British forces, Romanian troops tested the launch systems of rockets HIMARS – the same weapons that have helped Ukraine drive Russian forces into retreat – against simulated targets in the Black Sea in recent months.

Romania bought three of the missile systems years ago and officials said they are still there delivery process.

Lieutenant General Iulian Berdila, head of Romania’s ground forces, who has welcomed the deployment, said regional officials had warned the West of developments. “incremental and toxicof Russia since wresting control of Crimea from Ukraine in a 2014 local referendum that much of the world considers illegal.

“We have been very careful about what Russia does and what the consequences are,” Berdila said.

Regarding training with US troops, he said:

“We have researched the different scenarios together and are ready to synchronize plans as we speak.” AND

The number and senior command level of US forces currently in Romania are sufficient, he said, for “combined predictable deterrence and defense.”

McConville declined to predict what the Biden administration might do in Romania, but generally said the troops at the airbase have “really made a difference, and I think we’ll continue to provide those capabilities as needed.”

Having a division commander and his staff so close to the Ukrainian border is more than symbolic, said Becca Wasser, a war analyst at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.

It enables quick decisions on where to place thousands of troops and weapons in case Russia leads the war to NATO territory.

“What you are seeing is indicative of a shift in how the US military is approaching posture and deployments around the world as the era of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has changed,” Wasser said.

“It’s not necessarily going to be this combat display – what you really have is a deterrence display.”

It’s the same kind of mission, Wasser said, conducted by tens of thousands of US soldiers sent to US Central Command bases in 2020 as tensions with Iran escalated across the Middle East.

For Staff Sergeant Vitalia Sanders, who leads a battalion at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, the mission is so personal as a professional.

She was born in a town outside Uzhhorod in western Ukraine and moved to northwestern Indiana when she was 12 to live with her grandmother.

He was last in Ukraine in 2005, and his brother is still there, though his communications via WhatsApp and Facebook have been limited as Russian attacks knocked out the power.

Sanders has been in the US military for 21 years, having served in Afghanistan and Kuwait.

But he never forgot the threat Russia posed to Ukraine.

“Just being here, so close to home,” he said, “makes me hungry and makes me fight, and I hope to pass that energy on to the soldiers so they know how important it is to everyone.”

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