Biden to announce new Russia sanctions whereas in Brussels

President Joe Biden plans to announce new sanctions towards Russia on Thursday whereas in Brussels for conferences with NATO and European allies, in accordance with a prime nationwide safety aide.

Biden, who will participate in a particular assembly of NATO and deal with the European Council summit, can be anticipated to underscore efforts to implement the avalanche of current sanctions already introduced by the U.S. and allies.

“He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement,” mentioned White House nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan, who declined to additional preview new sanctions the president will announce.

Biden is touring to Brussels and Poland — which has acquired greater than 2 million Ukrainian refugees who’ve fled for the reason that Feb. 24 invasion — trying to press for continued unity amongst Western allies as Russia presses on with its brutal invasion of Ukraine.

In Poland, Biden will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda, who has requested additional U.S. assist and a stepped up navy presence on NATO’s jap flank because the warfare grinds on. The U.S. has already greater than doubled its common troop presence of greater than 4,000 U.S. troops. Currently, there are about 10,000 U.S. troops in Poland.

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania have additionally referred to as for a larger NATO or U.S. navy presence in current weeks.

Sullivan instructed that might be coming quickly as Biden plans to have talks “on longer term adjustments to NATO force posture on the eastern flank.”

“We feel that it is the right place for him to go to be able to see troops, to be able to see humanitarian experts and to be able to meet with a frontline and very vulnerable ally,” Sullivan mentioned of Biden’s go to to Poland.

Talks on troop changes are already underway.

Last week, at NATO’s Brussels headquarters, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterparts weighed what defenses to arrange on the group’s jap flank, from Estonia within the north by Latvia, Lithuania and Poland all the way down to Bulgaria and Romania on the Black Sea.

The intention is to discourage President Vladimir Putin from ordering an invasion of any of the 30 allies; not simply all through this warfare however for the subsequent 5-10 years. Before launching it, Putin had demanded that NATO cease increasing and withdraw its forces from the east. The reverse is going on.

In simply the previous two months, the U.S. presence in Europe has jumped from about 80,000 troops to about 100,000, which is almost as many as had been there in 1997 when the United States and its NATO allies started an enlargement of the alliance that Putin says threatens Russia and have to be reversed. By comparability, in 1991, the yr the Soviet Union dissolved, the United States had 305,000 troops in Europe, together with 224,000 in Germany alone, in accordance with Pentagon information. The quantity then dropped steadily, reaching 101,000 in 2005 and about 64,000 as just lately as 2020.

Biden and NATO have mentioned repeatedly that whereas the U.S. and NATO will present weapons and different defensive help to non-NATO member Ukraine, they’re decided to keep away from any escalation on behalf of Kyiv that dangers a broader warfare with Russia.

Polish leaders have referred to as for a Western peacekeeping mission to intervene in Ukraine, a step that the U.S. and different allies fear may result in a broadening of the warfare.

Sullivan added that Biden will even “announce joint action on enhancing European energy security and reducing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.”