Fourteen jumbo planes a day: A ballet is being organized on this runway near the border with Ukraine to discreetly send tons of military aid, which about twenty Western countries have promised to send to the Ukrainian army.
The US Chief of Staff, General Mark Millie, inspected the site on Friday, the location of which is kept secret for security reasons and which is managed by 22 countries coordinated by the United States.
The few journalists accompanying the top American, who failed to take pictures, saw hundreds of Javelin anti-tank missiles loading into the border.
Rocket pallets, simply covered with cellophane, were moved by forklifts maneuvered by men in civilian clothes.
On the runway, the hold of a US C-17 transport aircraft of the US Air Force has just been closed and delivered. A second C-17 landed.
The weapons did not remain at the scene: they were immediately loaded onto neutral-looking vehicles and sent by land, the military explained. Air revolutions can reach 18 per day. Of that number, only four or five are American.
The ballet is coordinated by soldiers and civilians, mostly NATO members, who have come to support Ukraine in its fight against a larger and better-equipped Russian army.
In addition to the United States, which has provided more than $ 1 billion in military aid to Ukraine in the past year, many European countries are supplying Kyiv with anti-tank missiles but also anti-aircraft missiles. Stinger, armor, fuel, ammunition, assault rifles, field rations to enable the Ukrainian army to resist.
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The United States has already delivered more than two-thirds of its promised weapons to Ukraine in late February, which is using them “effectively” to slow the advance of Russian forces, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday.
In addition, after the Russian invasion shook and deeply alarmed the Eastern European countries that joined NATO, the United States sent thousands of additional troops there to calm them down.
– “Remarkable” block –
They are located in particular in Poland, where General Mili visited the troops of the 82nd Airborne Division in the large Polish training camp Nova Deba, in the southeastern part of the country.
To increase the interoperability of Polish and US forces, the two countries’ troops have multiplied joint exercises for two weeks, such as the one presented to the US Chief of Staff on Friday.
The American armor simulates an attack that Polish soldiers in Leopard battle tanks coming out of a birch forest, supported by American armor, repulsed.
These soldiers are there to “reinforce the idea that the United States is a full member (of the Atlantic Alliance) and that we have every intention of fulfilling our obligations under Article 5 of NATO,” the chief of staff said. This article provides for the intervention of the other members of the alliance in the event of an armed attack on one of them.
The head of the US ground force in Europe, General Chris Cavoli, who is monitoring the deployment, welcomed the unprecedented mobilization of NATO forces in two weeks.
“I have never seen NATO so united,” he said. “I have never seen the determination and concrete combat readiness that I now see in the Alliance’s ground forces. This is remarkable.”
General Millie then visited the reception center set up shortly before the invasion to accommodate all Americans fleeing the fighting.
Located in a conference center in Rzeszów (south), this reception center, which can temporarily accommodate up to 2,500 people, has not yet been used. But it can accept refugees if the exodus of Ukrainians worsens.
Led by General Chris Donahue, known to be the last American soldier to leave Kabul airport in late August, the G2 Arena also houses the temporary headquarters of the 82nd Division in Poland, as well as a multinational operations center.
From there, soldiers from the 82nd Division monitored the flow of refugees arriving at the Polish border and analyzed the course of the fighting in Ukraine to ensure the greatest possible security of Western arms supplies to the Ukrainian army.
sl / seb