U.S. To Put Heavy Weaponry in Eastern Europe

The Pentagon is ready to position tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weaponry for use by up to 5,000 American troops in Eastern European countries, officials said today, according to The New York Times—an attempt to deter further Russian aggression in the region. It would be the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has placed military equipment in the newer NATO states that had once been under Soviet dominion. After the Baltic states joined NATO in 2004, the alliance avoided stationing heavy weapons close to the former Soviet Union in a bid to improve relations. After Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine, however, alarm has grown in the capitals of former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact nations now allied with the West. The amount of proposed weaponry is similar to what the United States maintained in Kuwait for more than a decade after the 1991 Gulf War.