350 UK troops arrive in Poland amid Russia-NATO tensions
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The UK seems adamant on involving itself in the NATO-fueled military crisis.
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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the deployment of an additional 350 British troops to the eastern European country, an extra number to the 100 British military engineers that were deployed last year during the migrant crisis at the Polish-Belarussian border.
In a meeting with his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki, Johnson said, “The message I have been giving to all our counterparts is that we need to work together now to achieve de-escalation, to persuade Vladimir Putin to de-escalate and to disengage and as we tirelessly pursue the path of diplomacy to bring an end to the tensions on Ukrainian borders. It’s important to remember why we’re doing this.”
“We won’t accept, Poland and the UK won’t accept a world in which a powerful neighbor can bully or attack their neighbors and we won’t accept because we believe all people no matter where they are born have a right to live safely, to choose who governs them and to decide what organizations they aspire to have membership of or indeed what bodies they want to cease being members of,” he added.
On his account, Morawiecki said that “the political objective of Putin is to dismantle NATO, this is why we have to be very determined in showing how coherent the alliance is, how much we stand together and we understand the tensions on the eastern flank very well.”
Johnson visited Brussels and Warsaw on Thursday as Denmark announced it would allow the deployment of US military troops in the face of rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
The West has been accusing Russia of preparing to invade Ukraine and amassing over 100,000 soldiers on their common border, as the United States is increasingly militarizing Eastern Europe, under the pretext that Russia is preparing for military operations in Ukraine.
Alongside the accusations, the West has been threatening Russia with "severe consequences" if it invades, though Macron was the first major Western leader to meet with Putin since the crisis started in December.
Russia repeatedly denied the western accusations while maintaining its right to defend its security.
