Who is sending troops to ukraine

The West’s response to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has been resolute, unified and consequential. But it is inadequate to the task of deterring and containing Vladimir Putin’s designs on Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s frontline states. Sanctions alone are insufficient to deter Mr. Putin, who, like countless European tyrants before him, recognizes only strength. If Western leaders want Mr. Putin to sue for peace, they need to increase troop levels on NATO’s eastern flank and introduce a robust defensive military presence in western Ukraine and the Black Sea.

At present the West is allowing Mr. Putin’s illegal invasion and saber-rattling to define the battlespace. This is wrong: Western militaries can and should operate inside western Ukraine, far from Russia’s ground operations in the east of the country. A decisive show of force inside Ukraine would signal to Mr. Putin that the West won’t tolerate Russian attempts to redraw borders by force. It will also stanch the worst bloodletting in Europe since 1945 and forestall future Russian aggression in Europe.

Western politicians recognize that we are at a pivotal moment in history. Mr. Putin seeks to upend the European order forged by American-led victories in World War II and the Cold War. Whether he is nursing old grievances or trying to rebuild a czarist empire is beside the point. If his scorched-earth tactics yield victory in Ukraine, he will stir up trouble in Moldova, the Baltic states or Poland. It is ahistorical and unwise to assume otherwise. Hitler’s 1938 annexation of the Sudetenland is an imperfect but instructive analogy.

Article 5 of the NATO charter obliges the whole bloc to come to the defense of member nations that are under attack. Western resolve in the current crisis will shape Mr. Putin’s willingness to gamble on such a response in any future showdown. His successes in Crimea in 2014 and Syria in 2015-16 were key factors in his decision to invade Ukraine.

The U.S. and Europe have risen to the occasion. They have imposed crushing financial penalties on Russian firms and rushed materiel to Ukraine. But bloody history shows that strategic patience pays off for Russia. Mr. Putin will likely gain sway over much of Ukraine, remain ensconced in the Kremlin, and plot his next moves westward. Western politicians, understandably wary of military commitments after long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, have ruled out sending troops. But forgoing a defensive humanitarian deployment in western Ukraine brings significant risks, including months of horrific bloodshed and, down the road, an emboldened Russia.

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There are no international treaties or laws preventing a military deployment now that Mr. Putin has invaded Ukraine. The democratically elected government of Volodymyr Zelensky would welcome such a troop presence. Mr. Putin believes he is dictating events, and so far Western nations are going along. That dynamic should be reversed.

Western powers have dispatched thousands of troops to frontline NATO states for humanitarian purposes. But these forces’ impact would be far more consequential inside Ukraine. Western powers should insert heavily armored forces into pockets of western Ukraine, making clear that such deployments are at the invitation of the sovereign government, are designed to safeguard humanitarian operations, and won’t engage offensively with Russian forces.

Such forces, drawn from NATO states and possibly other allied countries, could be structured similarly to NATO-led missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. If Mr. Putin’s ground forces remain bogged down in eastern Ukraine, this humanitarian-oriented force could gradually move east. The recent uptick in airstrikes in parts of western Ukraine underscores the need to deter Mr. Putin bringing his indiscriminate bombing campaign to towns and cities on NATO’s periphery.

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This plan requires hard-nosed leadership, but it doesn’t mean automatic war with Russia, let alone a nuclear conflict. Mr. Putin is fond of saber-rattling, not least because it has worked as deterrence thus far. The Russian leader, whose forces are being stymied by an outgunned but determined Ukrainian military, is unlikely to risk skirmishes with better-equipped Western divisions on the other side of Ukraine who aren’t shooting at him. Mr. Putin may be a zealot and a gambler, but he and his generals remain rational. They aren’t looking to trigger a nuclear armageddon.

Western deployments in and around Ukraine would signal to Mr. Putin that the U.S. and NATO will no longer tolerate attempts to violate the post-World War II rules-based order. They would also temper Russian gains in Ukraine, helping ensure the country’s survival, even if de facto partitioned in the near-term. Countless lives would be saved.

This moment calls for decisive action, well-planned and calibrated to avoid a shooting war. Politicians must cast aside straw-man arguments and what-if scenarios and make clear to Mr. Putin his aggression must end.

Mr. Hood, a foreign-policy practitioner since 2001, worked for the United Nations, 2001-06, and in the Office of Vice President Mike Pence, 2019-21.

(CNN) President Joe Biden has warned Americans they will have to pay a price for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Gas prices are likely to rise.

The post-World War II world order that has maintained relative peace in Europe is threatened.

But Biden has also been very clear on another point: US troops will not be sent to Ukraine to take part in the conflict.

As he announced new sanctions on Russia on Thursday, Biden said, "Our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict." He added, "Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the east."

When he announced the first tranche of sanctions against Russia for beginning its invasion on Tuesday, Biden similarly took great care to make clear the US was not being aggressive toward Russia.

"Let me be clear: These are totally defensive moves on our part. We have no intention of fighting Russia," Biden said.

Earlier in February, Biden told NBC News he would not consider any scenario that included sending US troops to evacuate Americans in Ukraine.

"There's not. That's a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another," he said.

While Biden's clarification that US troops would not become offensively involved can help avoid a conflict between the US and Russia, critics pointed out it also made clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his forces would face fewer obstacles in their invasion.

"Biden diluted our most important source of leverage in this crisis," Ian Brzezinski, former Pentagon official under President George W. Bush told the New York Times earlier this month.

US troops are in countries that border Ukraine

A major element of Putin's invasion is his fear that Ukraine could become part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which was formed after World War II to contain the Soviet Union and has expanded in recent decades to include former Soviet bloc countries.

Ukraine borders the NATO member countries of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. If Russia threatened one of these countries, the US would be required by the agreement to defend them.

"We want to send an unmistakable message, though, that the United States, together with our Allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO," Biden said Tuesday.

He said something similar last week, in remarks from the White House, but he added clearly, "We also will not send troops in to fight in Ukraine, but we will continue to support the Ukrainian people."

Moving troops within NATO countries

While Biden has pledged not to send US troops to Ukraine, the US has sent additional troops and fighter jets to eastern European countries including Poland and Romania in recent weeks and on Thursday announced the deployment of 7,000 additional troops to Germany.

After Russia's invasion and attack on Ukraine, CNN is reporting that the Biden administration is considering moving more US forces already in Europe to countries farther east due to the massive Russian firepower so close to allies, according to a US official familiar with the matter.

"Today we activated NATO's defense stance that gives our military commanders more authority to move forces and to deploy forces when needed, and of course this can also be elements of the NATO response force," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday. "We are ready, we are adjusting our posture but what we do is defensive, measured, and we don't seek confrontation. We want to prevent the conflict."

Opposition to major US involvement

Americans are wary of US intervention in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to polls taken in the runup to Russia's invasion.

In an AP-NORC poll, conducted last Friday through this Monday, just 26% of Americans believed the US should play a major role in the situation between Russia and Ukraine. About half, 52%, said it should play a minor role and another 20% that it should play no role at all.

One-third of Democrats (32%) and 22% of Republicans wanted the US to play a major role. Independents were most likely to say the US should play no role; 32% felt that way, compared with 22% among Republicans and 14% among Democrats.

In light of the polling, Biden and American officials would have to be very careful to engage the public before changing the administration's position on the commitment of US troops.

This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday.

CNN's Barbara Starr and Ariel Edwards-Levy contributed to this report.