The United States maintains troops all over the world, and certainly where embassies exist. But there is a difference between the U.S. military personnel who are there to guard diplomats and those who are “boots on the ground,” indicating that those troops are ready for conflict.
Such is the case in Ukraine, and as the conflict between Ukraine and Russia escalates, the United States has officially not entered the fight, but now the deployment of troops has significantly altered.
Two reports this week by AP and the Washington Post reveal that now there are “inspectors” added to the troops in Ukraine. “A small number of U.S. military forces inside Ukraine have recently begun doing onsite inspections to ensure that Ukrainian troops are properly accounting for the Western-provided weapons they receive, a senior U.S. defense official told Pentagon reporters Monday,” the AP/WaPo reporting revealed.
The American troops are said to be performing “inspections” of US weapon caches after last week the State Department and Pentagon unveiled a new plan to track US-supplied weapons in efforts to implement accountability for the billions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition transferred to Ukrainian forces since near the start of the war eight months ago.
As these tasks are separate from embassy security they fall under a different deployment, although the phrase “boots on the ground” has not been used to describe them, that is what they are.
Oh wow… US boots on the ground in Ukraine? Delivering solutions to problems you created in the first place… so you can create more problems and bring more “solutions…” Rinse, repeat. https://t.co/zbQpsid5LK
— Alex (Sasha) Krainer (@NakedHedgie) November 1, 2022
In a follow-up Tuesday report, The Washington Post detailed the following:
U.S. monitors have conducted in-person inspections for only about 10 percent of the 22,000 U.S.-provided weapons sent to Ukraine that require special oversight.
U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public previously, said they are racing to deploy new means for tracking weapons seen as having a heightened risk of diversion, including Stinger surface-to-air missiles and Javelin antitank missiles, amid what they describe as Ukraine’s “super hot conflict.”
The initiative is broadly being seen as part of Biden admin efforts to assuage Republican anger in Congress after complaints have grown louder over the unaccountable “wild West” way in which Pentagon weapons have proliferated in Ukraine – as even CNN months ago underscored.
Indicating that the new troops are not military actions, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson says the Ukrainians have been cooperating as willing partners in weapons accountability and implementing measures ensuring a proper chain of custody. “While we recognize the unpredictability of combat, the United States and Ukraine have cooperated to prevent illicit weapons diversion since Russia’s further invasion began earlier this year,” she said.
As Zero Hedge notes, “Like with Syria before, it’s likely the White House and Pentagon will carefully avoid acknowledging wording like “boots on the ground” in their press statements…”
But the Pentagon has now confirmed the change in U.S. military personnel existing in Ukraine. U.S. Air Force Brig. General Pat Ryder acknowledged during an official briefing Tuesday that active duty U.S. military personnel are not only deployed inside of Ukraine but are operating far away from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
Ryder spoke at a press conference and stated:
“We do have small teams that are compromised of embassy personnel that are conducting some inspections of security assistance delivery at a variety of locations. My understanding is that they would be well far away from any type of frontline actions, we are relying on other partners to do that…They’re not going to be operating on the front lines.”
Ryder did not answer a reporter’s question about what the US would do if any active-duty US troops were killed.
Other countries are noticing western weapons appearing outside of the Ukraine/Russia war.
This week Finland has been among the first European countries to document the spread of West-supplied weaponry outside of Ukraine’s borders and into the hands of criminal elements, as Zero Hedge has reported. “Weapons shipped [by various countries] to Ukraine have also been found in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands,” Finland’s federal National Bureau of Investigation chief Christer Ahlgren was quoted by national broadcaster Yle as saying.
As Zero Hedge notes:
Russia has already long warned it will attack foreign weapons shipments, transport convoys, and warehouses found in Ukraine… but how long before Russian forces target American military inspectors on the ground behind the front lines? The longer the grinding conflict drags on, the greater potential for such a disastrous scenario, whether intentional or not.
While at this point we could rightly call the Ukraine conflict a “proxy war” between Russia and US-NATO, all signs point to a steady slide into direct conflict. Now that Pentagon “inspectors” are confirmed on the ground in Ukraine (notably without any Congressional vote), expect the White House to vehemently deny that this marks any level of an escalation as far as Washington’s direct involvement… again, despite the evident danger of American soldiers placed in “harm’s way” – potentially being under Russian bombs.
THIS GUY IS A SNEAKY POS AND NEEDS TO BE IMPEACHED BEFORE HE KILLS MORE OF OUR KIDS AND GETS WORLD WAR 3 UNDERWAY………ALL THIS COMMIE-CRAP NEEDS TO BE THROWN OUT OF THE PEOPLES HOUSE
Worse, he is not the duly elected president. He’s an imposter, an actor who can’t remember his lines.
The CIA is already there, I’ve read. Next time Joes gets his ice cream, tell him Americans don’t want a war. He effed up the Afghanistan pullout and the Taliban has sold some of the hardware left behind as well as shipping it to their jihad allies across the globe. He has done enough damage!