The White House has approved a Pentagon plan for US troops in Poland to help thousands of Americans likely to flee Ukraine if Russia attacks, as the Biden administration tries to avoid the kind of chaotic evacuation conducted in Afghanistan, Report informs via the Wall Street Journal.
Some of the 1,700 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division being deployed to Poland to bolster that ally will in coming days begin to set up checkpoints, tent camps and other temporary facilities inside Poland’s border with Ukraine in preparation to serve arriving Americans, US officials said. The troops aren’t authorized to enter Ukraine and won’t evacuate Americans or fly aircraft missions from inside Ukraine, officials said.
Instead, the officials said, the mission would be to provide logistics support to help coordinate the evacuation of Americans from Poland, after they arrive there from Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, likely by land and without US military support, the officials said. Roughly 30,000 Americans are in Ukraine, and if Russia attacks, some of them as well as Ukrainians and others would likely want to leave quickly, the officials said. Russia has been building up troops along the Ukraine border for months, and Western officials have said an invasion could come within weeks, while the Kremlin has said Russia doesn’t plan to invade Ukraine.
Looming over the current planning on Ukraine, defense officials said, is the memory of the rapid evacuation of more than 100,000 Americans and Afghans that US and allied forces conducted in Kabul last August ending the US’s war in Afghanistan.
Some of the same military commanders who were part of the Kabul mission are now leading the US effort around Ukraine.
“Everyone who lived the evacuation from Afghanistan felt it was remarkable but also chaotic,” one defense official said. “That was a messy, messy withdrawal. We don’t want a chaotic withdrawal from Ukraine.”
Other officials said such evacuation planning is a prudent measure regardless of the Afghan experience, which, US officials said, posed a different set of challenges than Ukraine.
The White House rejected comparisons to Afghanistan.
“I think it is really important to separate the two [nations.] We are not in a 20-year war with US troops in Ukraine. That’s a very different circumstance,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. “We continue to view our relationship, both from the White House, from the diplomatic team and from the Defense Department as one where we are closely coordinating.”