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SLAVIANSK, Ukraine Russian mercenaries with experience fighting in Syria and Libya have covertly trickled into two rebel territories in eastern Ukraine, helping to lay the groundwork for war, according to two senior European security officials.

The mercenaries, which so far number about 300, are with the Russian paramilitary group Wagner and arrived in the separatist enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk wearing civilian clothes, according to the European officials. Western intelligence services have tracked them leaving Libya and Syria and arriving in Russian-controlled Crimea, from where they have filtered into the rebel territories, one of the officials said.

Their numbers are tiny compared to the estimated 190,000 troops that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has placed around Ukraines border as he threatens to wage what many fear could be the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

But the presence of Wagner fighters is another ominous sign of the approach of war, and raises the possibility that Mr. Putin may follow a playbook used in 2014, when the Kremlin deployed Russian mercenaries, mostly veterans of the Russian military, to augment the forces of rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine.

The precise purpose of the mercenaries is a subject of debate. One of the officials said the mercenaries had been placed in the rebel territories to engage in sabotage and stage false flag operations intended to make it seem as if Ukrainian forces were attacking civilian targets.

But the second senior official, who is with Ukraines military, said the mercenaries began arriving two months ago and were primarily brought in to fill out the ranks of the separatist forces, to make it seem like local fighters were leading the charge. The Ukrainian official, interviewed on Wednesday, said it was Russian intelligence services that were responsible for sabotage.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss sensitive intelligence findings.

Ukraine is at a moment of intensifying anxiety. For months, even as Russian troops have amassed on their borders, Ukrainians have been largely sanguine and their government mostly dismissive of increasingly alarmist rhetoric from the West that a Russian invasion could be at hand.

But the mood appears to have changed dramatically almost overnight.

Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has mobilized military reservists and declared a state of emergency. Columns of military vehicles including tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks carrying light artillery pieces have appeared on Ukrainian roads.

In the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, less than a few dozen miles from Russian forces across the border, soldiers dressed in body armor and carrying automatic weapons had set up checkpoints on Wednesday and were checking cars, seemingly at random.

This week, Ukraines defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, wrote a blunt open letter to Ukraines troops, warning them to prepare for the worst.

Ahead lies a difficult test, he wrote. There will be losses. You will have to go through pain and overcome fear and despondency.

Last month, the White House warned that the Russian military was sending saboteurs into eastern Ukraine to stage events U.S. officials said could be used to fabricate a pretext to war. That warning appears to have come to fruition, at least according to Ukrainian officials, who pointed to a recent spate of curious incidents, including the detonation of a bomb in the vehicle of a rebel security official, and a bizarre report by Russian government media that five Ukrainian soldiers were killed trying to launch a sneak attack across the Russian border. Ukrainian officials have said each of these incidents was fabricated. It was not clear whether any mercenaries were involved in these episodes.

Feb. 24, 2022, 6:00 p.m. ET

The use of mercenaries is regarded as a key feature of the Kremlins military strategy around the world. But the strategy was born and honed in Ukraine, beginning in 2014, when Moscow sought to disguise its involvement in supporting what it publicly was calling a popular, democratic uprising against Ukraines government.

What is at the root of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine within its natural sphere of influence, and it has grown unnerved at Ukraines closeness with the West and the prospect that the country might join NATO or the European Union. While Ukraine is part of neither, it receives financial and military aid from the United States and Europe.

Are these tensions just starting now? Antagonism between the two nations has been simmeringsince 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, after an uprising in Ukraine replaced their Russia-friendly president with a pro-Western government. Then, Russia annexed Crimeaand inspired a separatist movement in the east.A cease-fire was negotiated in 2015, but fighting has continued.

How has Ukraine responded? On Feb. 23, Ukraine declared a 30-day state of emergencyas cyberattacks knocked out government institutions. Following the beginning of the attacks, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines president, declared martial law. The foreign minister called the attacks a full-scale invasion and called on the world to stop Putin.

The involvement of mercenaries, as well as regular Russian soldiers, was never easy to hide. Dead and wounded fighters turned up at hospitals in the eastern Donbas region with Russian passports. The bodies of young men, riddled with shrapnel, would unexpectedly turn up in their home villages deep within Russia with no explanation of how they died.

Moscow has consistently denied that professional Russian soldiers have taken part in any fighting in Ukraine, though the United States and Ukraine say that tens of thousands of Russian troops have been deployed over the years to fight in the separatist enclaves, even before the recent military buildup.

But Russia has acknowledged the participation of what it calls volunteers, saying they choose to spend their holidays assisting fellow Slavs fighting against what Moscow has called a fascist regime in Ukraine.

Wagner is the best-known of an array of Russian mercenary groups, which over the years have become more formalized, acting more like Western military contractors.

Wagners fighters have gained military experience in wars in the Middle East and serve as security advisers to various governments, including in the Central African Republic, Sudan and, most recently, Mali. Though they are loosely tied to the Russian military, they operate at a distance, which has allowed the Kremlin to deny responsibly when fighters engage in unseemly behavior.

In 2017, the Trump administration sanctioned Dmitri Utkin, the commander of the Wagner group, for his role in recruiting soldiers to join separatist forces in Ukraine. In 2021, a United Nations report found that mercenaries from Wagner based in the Central African Republic had killed civilians, looted homes and fatally shot worshipers at a mosque.

Several years earlier, Wagner fighters in Syria, together with Syrian pro-government forces, launched a massive artillery barrage against American commandos at a desert redoubt, apparently in an attempt to seize oil and gas fields the Americans were protecting. In response, the Americans called in airstrikes that resulted in 200 to 300 deaths.

In both cases, the Russian government denied involvement.

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Russian Mercenaries Covertly Entered Separatist Areas of Ukraine - The New York Times

Ukrainian military forces walk in front of damaged buildings on the front line with Russia-backed separatists in Mariinka in the Donetsk region on Feb. 7. Aleksey Filippov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Ukrainian military forces walk in front of damaged buildings on the front line with Russia-backed separatists in Mariinka in the Donetsk region on Feb. 7.

In the latest flare-up of the crisis in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday recognized the independence of two breakaway regions in Ukraine's east as independent and ordered military forces to deploy there.

The rebel-controlled territories, Luhansk and Donetsk, comprise a larger region called Donbas that borders Russia. The two territories have been led by pro-Russia separatists for nearly a decade.

Experts warn that Putin's order for troops to carry out what he called "peacekeeping functions" in the region and what President Biden has now called the start of an invasion could lay the groundwork and provide the pretext for a larger Russian military incursion into Ukraine.

To understand why Luhansk and Donetsk are playing such a central role in the conflict's most recent escalation, it's worth going back to the popular uprising that kicked off the current unrest in Ukraine, which has been simmering since 2013.

In November of that year, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych announced he would refuse to sign an agreement with the European Union to bring Ukraine into a free trade agreement, citing pressure from Russia.

The move sparked massive protests in Ukraine calling for Yanukovych to resign. In February 2014, violence between police and protesters in Kyiv's Maidan square left dozens dead; Yanukovych eventually fled to Russia and the Ukrainian parliament established a new government.

Greeting the new government and Yanukovych's ouster as a coup, Putin sent troops into Crimea, a former Soviet republic that had been part of Ukraine since 1954.

Within days, Russia annexed Crimea despite international pressure from the U.S. and European allies following a referendum that apparently resulted in 97% of voters choosing to join Russia, though the results are disputed.

In April 2014, fighting began northeast of Crimea across the Sea of Azov, in another pro-Russian stronghold called Donbas.

Clashes soon broke out between pro-Russian rebels in Donbas and Ukrainian military forces, with about 40,000 Russian troops stationed just across the border. (In a similar warning to his more recent overtures, Putin said at the time that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine and that it would only send troops into the country if necessary.)

Critics have accused Russia of aiding in the insurgency in eastern Ukraine, though Moscow has denied it.

By late April 2014, Ukraine's interim President Alexander Turchinov said the government had lost control of the eastern part of the country.

What followed were years of tense relations between the Ukrainian government in Kyiv and the self-described Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic.

A man walks past an abandoned building in the Donetsk region town of Avdiivka on Monday. Aleksey Filippov/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A man walks past an abandoned building in the Donetsk region town of Avdiivka on Monday.

A 2014 referendum in the region found strong support among residents for secession from Ukraine, and a national presidential election in the spring was marred by obstruction and in some cases violence in the breakaway east, as clashes continued.

Later, Ukraine's government decided to grant the separatist regions self-rule and give the militants amnesty, though the move stopped short of declaring the regions fully independent. It was a major concession from the government, though some separatists said it didn't go far enough. On-again, off-again fighting continued even as both sides agreed on a cease-fire.

The violent power struggle in eastern Ukraine, though at times reduced to a low boil, never really ended.

In 2019 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Putin for face-to-face peace talks on the continuing violence in eastern Ukraine, but the discussions didn't lead to a long-term solution.

More than 13,000 people have died as a result of the conflict and more than 1.5 million were displaced, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Activists hold banners and shout slogans during an "Empire must die" rally outside the Russian Embassy in Kyiv on Tuesday. Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Activists hold banners and shout slogans during an "Empire must die" rally outside the Russian Embassy in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Now the threat of major violence is looming again.

U.S. officials said that a recent warning from Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, of an impending attack by the Ukrainian military was nothing more than a "false flag" operation meant to sow unrest. Russian state media have also accused Ukraine's military of killing civilians, though again there is no evidence to back up their claims.

Western powers say they support Ukraine's sovereignty and have provided the country with military equipment for self-defense, but they haven't sent their own troops to beat back the Russian advance.

Rather, now that Biden has called Russia's latest move an invasion, Western powers are responding with sanctions they hope will end any further escalations in Ukraine.

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Why Luhansk and Donetsk are key to understanding the latest escalation in Ukraine - NPR

Are you listening to Putin? is not the kind of text message I expect to receive from a friend in Moscow. But thats the question my closest friend asked me on Monday, when the Russian President was about twenty minutes into a public address in which he would announce that he was recognizing two eastern regions of Ukraine as independent countries and effectively lay out his rationale for launching a new military offensive against Ukraine. I was listeningPutin had just said that Ukraine had no history of legitimate statehood. When the speech was over, my friend posted on Facebook, I cant breathe.

Fifty-four years ago, the Soviet dissident Larisa Bogoraz wrote, It becomes impossible to live and to breathe. When she wrote the note, in 1968, she was about to take part in a desperate protest: eight people went to Red Square with banners that denounced the Soviet Unions invasion of Czechoslovakia. I have always understood Bogorazs note to be an expression of shamethe helpless, silent shame of a citizen who can do nothing to stop her countrys aggression. But on Monday I understood those words as expressing something more, something that my friends in Russia were feeling in addition to shame: the tragedy that is the death of hope.

For some Soviet intellectuals, Czechoslovakia in 1968 represented the possibility of a different future. That spring, events appeared to prove that Czechoslovakia was part of the larger world, despite being in the Soviet bloc. The leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was instituting reforms. It seemed that, after the great terrors of both Hitler and Stalin, there could be freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, a free exchange of ideas in the media, and possibly even actual elections in Eastern and Central Europe, and that all of these changes could be achieved peacefully. The Czechoslovaks called it socialism with a human face.

In August, 1968, Soviet tanks rolled in, crushing the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and hope everywhere in the Soviet bloc. Nothing different was going to happen here. It became impossible to live and to breathe. This was when eight Moscow acquaintances, with minimal discussion and cordination, went to Red Square and unfurled posters that read For Your Liberty and Ours and Hands Off Czechoslovakia, among others. All were arrested, and seven were given jail time, held in psychiatric detention, or sent into internal exile.

Ukraine has long represented hope for a small minority of Russians. Ukraine shares Russias history of tyranny and terror. It lost more than four million people to a man-made famine in 1931-34 and still uncounted others to other kinds of Stalinist terror. Between five and seven million Ukrainians died during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation in 1941-44; this included one and a half million Jews killed in what is often known as the Holocaust by Bullets. Just as in Russia, no family survived untouched by the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, both Russian and Ukrainian societies struggled to forge new identities. Both contended with poverty, corruption, and growing inequality. Both had leaders who tried to stay in office by falsifying the vote. But in 2004 Ukrainians revolted against a rigged election, camping out in Kyivs Independence Square for weeks. The countrys highest court ordered a revote. Nine years later, when the President sold the country out to Russiaagreeing to scrap an association agreement with the European Union in exchange for fifteen billion in Russian loansUkrainians of vastly different political persuasions came to Independence Square again. They stayed there, day and night, through the dead of winter. They stayed when the government opened fire on them. More than a hundred people died before the corrupt President fled to Russia. A willingness to die for freedom is now a part of not only Ukrainians mythology but their lived history.

Many Russiansboth the majority who accept and support Putin and the minority who oppose himwatched the Ukrainian revolutions as though looking in a mirror that could predict Russias own future. The Kremlin became even more terrified of protests and cracked down on its opponents even harder. Some in the opposition believed that if Ukrainians won their freedom, Russians would follow. There was more than a hint of an unexamined imperialist instinct in this attitude, but there was something else in it, too: hope. It felt something like this: our history doesnt have to be our destiny. We may yet be brave enough and determined enough to win our freedom.

On Monday, Putin took aim at this sense of hope in his rambling, near-hour-long speech. Playing amateur historian, as he has done several times in recent years, Putin said that the Russian state is indivisible, and that the principles on the basis of which former Soviet republics won independence in 1991 were illegitimate. He effectively declared that the post-Cold War world order is over, that history is destiny and Ukraine will never get away from Russia.

Hannah Arendt observed that totalitarian regimes function by declaring imagined laws of history and then acting to enforce them. On Tuesday, Putin asked his puppet parliament for authorization to use force abroad. His aim is clear: in his speech, he branded the Ukrainian government as a group of radicals who carry out the will of their American puppet masters. As the self-appointed enforcer of the laws of history, Putin was laying down the groundwork for removing the Ukrainian government and installing one that he imagines will do the Kremlins bidding.

Putin expects to succeed because he can overwhelm Ukraine with military force, and because he has known the threat of force to be effective against unarmed opposition. Putins main opponent, Alexey Navalny, is in prison; the leaders of his movement are all either behind bars or in exile. The number of independent journalists in Russia has dwindled to a handful, and many of them, too, are working from exile, addressing tiny audiences, because the state blocks access to many of their Web sites and has branded others foreign agents. Putins sabre-rattling against Ukraine has drawn little protestless even than the annexation of Crimea did eight years ago. On Sunday, six people were detained for staging a protest in Pushkin Square, in central Moscow. One of them held a poster that said Hands Off Ukraine. Another was an eighty-year-old former Soviet dissident.

What Putin does not imagine is the kind and scale of resistance that he would actually encounter in Ukraine. These are the people who stood to the death in Independence Square. In 2014, they took up arms to defend Ukraine against a Russian incursion. Underequipped and underprepared, these volunteers joined the war effort from all walks of life. Others organized in monumental numbers to collect equipment and supplies to support the fighters and those suffering from the occupation of the east, in an effort that lasted for several years. When Putin encounters Ukrainian resistance, he will respond the only way he knows: with devastating force. The loss of life will be staggering. Watching it will make it impossible to live and to breathe.

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The Crushing Loss of Hope in Ukraine - The New Yorker

KYIV, Ukraine Pavlo Kaliuk, a freelance property broker in Ukraines capital, used to sell and rent properties to clients from the United States, France, Germany and Israel. Then in November, when Russia first began posting troops along the countrys border, the deals quickly dried up.

In Kyiv, if you are talking about apartments which are medium level or higher, most deals are on pause because we are really not sure what will happen tomorrow, said Mr. Kaliuk, 34.

Ukraine, which has been at war with Russia since 2014, is once again in a state of fearful suspended animation. The United States estimates that a combined 190,000 Russian troops and Moscow-backed secessionists are encircling the country and inside separatist-held territory as President Biden and other Western leaders warn that an invasion or attack could happen any day and leave tens of thousands of people wounded or killed.

Without outright declaring war or taking action that would trigger the harsh sanctions promised by the West, Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, has once again succeeded in destabilizing Ukraine and making clear that Russia could wreck the countrys economy. The evacuation announced last week of American, British and Canadian citizens has led to panic. Several international airlines have stopped flights into the country. Russian naval exercises in the Black Sea have exposed the vulnerability of Ukraines critical ports for commercial shipping.

As for real estate?

The number of requests is fewer and fewer every day, Mr. Kaliuk said.

The anxiety coursing through Kyiv is exactly what Mr. Putin hopes to achieve, according to Pavlo Kukhta, an adviser to Ukraines minister of energy. What they want to do is the equivalent of winning the war without firing a single bullet, by causing massive panic here, Mr. Kukhta said.

Timofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former minister of economic development, said his institution has estimated that the crisis has already cost Ukraine several billion dollars, just in the past few weeks. War or a long siege would only worsen the situation.

You either get an invasion or your economy hurts, he said.

The first major blow came Monday when two Ukrainian airlines said they were unable to acquire insurance for their flights, forcing Ukraines government to create a $592 million insurance fund to keep planes flying. On Feb. 11, London-based insurers had warned aviation companies that they would be unable to insure flights to Ukraine or those flying above its airspace.

KLM Airlines, a Dutch company, responded by saying it would halt flights. Many Dutch passengers were onboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it was shot down above territory controlled by pro-Moscow rebels in 2014. The German airline Lufthansa said it was suspending flights to Kyiv and Odessa starting Monday.

On Tuesday, Ukraine was subjected to a massive cyberattack, as hackers flooded the servers hosting websites until the servers became overloaded and shut down. Officials blamed Russia, though the Kremlin denied involvement. Still, Ukraine officials said it was the largest distributed denial-of-service attack in the countrys history and targeted government ministries and state banks.

They want people to start running on the banks, added Mr. Kukhta. The war is a hybrid the Russians are playing in several domains, the economy included.

Earlier in the week, Irina Gorovaya and other entrepreneurs in Kyiv organized a Stay In Ukraine campaign to try to rally people behind local businesses that are being hit by the economic upheaval. Ms. Gorovaya, the chief executive of Mozgi Group, a creative agency, said festivals and other events were losing money rapidly because people are too hesitant to buy tickets.

People are sitting at home thinking about what will come tomorrow, she said.

On Ukraines southern coastline, the arrival of the Russian Navy to conduct exercises in the Black Sea has been another reminder of Ukraines vulnerability, both militarily and economically, since in the event of war the countrys critical ports could face a blockade. So far, Russia has allowed a corridor to remain open for commercial shipping, and there have been no disruptions to operations at Ukrainian ports.

Feb. 24, 2022, 6:00 p.m. ET

We dont have any guarantees, but for now were operating normally, said Aleksandr Mukhin, who works in the development office at the port in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine.

On a visit to the port this week, the sweet, burned smell of sunflower oil, one of Ukraines primary exports, hung in the air. The oil was being pumped through a series of pipes into a bright red Italian vessel, the Saracena. Ukraine exports about 300,000 tons of sunflower oil a year.

During World War II, the port was the scene of fierce fighting; a portion of it has still not been repaired from the heavy bombing that occurred when Soviet forces fought to retake it from the Nazis.

The port of Odessa, the countrys largest oil and gas terminal and a major hub for grain exports, is also considered a possible target, especially given the significant sympathy in the city for pro-Russian separatists in 2014. Some military analysts have warned that Russia might try to take Odessa if the military invades.

But even without an all out blockade or attack, the ports can still be hobbled by fear of risk among international insurers. Londons marine insurance market on Tuesday listed the Russian and Ukrainian waters in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov as high risk, making it more expensive to ship goods to and from the ports. This will add more economic pressure to Ukraine, which relies on its Black Sea ports to export grain.

A retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, Ben Hodges, recently compared the Russian land and naval forces encircling like country to a boa constrictor around Ukraine, choking its economy and further threatening its sovereignty.

What is at the root of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine within its natural sphere of influence, and it has grown unnerved at Ukraines closeness with the West and the prospect that the country might join NATO or the European Union. While Ukraine is part of neither, it receives financial and military aid from the United States and Europe.

Are these tensions just starting now? Antagonism between the two nations has been simmeringsince 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, after an uprising in Ukraine replaced their Russia-friendly president with a pro-Western government. Then, Russia annexed Crimeaand inspired a separatist movement in the east.A cease-fire was negotiated in 2015, but fighting has continued.

How has Ukraine responded? On Feb. 23, Ukraine declared a 30-day state of emergencyas cyberattacks knocked out government institutions. Following the beginning of the attacks, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines president, declared martial law. The foreign minister called the attacks a full-scale invasion and called on the world to stop Putin.

The Kremlin aims to make Ukraine a failed state, which they believe they can achieve by applying constant pressure, he posted on Twitter, without actually launching a new offensive.

But the American response to the crisis has also infuriated some people, whether by creating panic with alarmist warnings of an imminent invasion or the decision to evacuate some embassy staff from Kyiv and set up a temporary office in the western city of Lviv, close to the border with Poland.

When someone decides to move the embassy to Lviv, they must understand that such news will cost the Ukrainian economy several hundred million dollars, David Arakhamia, the leader of the governing Servant of the Peoples Party, said in a television interview, adding: Every day we count the losses of the economy. We cant borrow in foreign markets because the rates there are crazy. Many exporters refuse us.

Olena Bilan, the chief economist of Dragon Capital, an investment firm, said Ukraines economy had been expected to grow by almost 4 percent this year, but the military crisis has shaved that prediction by almost half.

Even so, Ms. Bilan said, Ukraine is far better prepared economically than when Russian aggression began in 2014. Its foreign currency reserves are at historic highs, and it has largely decoupled its economy from Russia, aside from imports of oil and coking coal for the steel industry.

Ukraine is also preparing to separate itself from the Russian power grid, said Mr. Kukhta, and financial assistance from the European Union and the United States is helping to reassure investors and worried insurance companies.

We live in such conditions which are not so stable for eight years already, said Mr. Kaliuk, the real estate agent. Ive gotten used to it and try to be flexible.

Today, Mr. Kaliuk said, only one group of foreign investors seem unperturbed Belarusians trying to escape from the strongman rule of Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, one of Mr. Putins closest allies.

Ukraine is the borderland between the free world and the world of dictatorship, Mr. Kaliuk said. We are lucky we are on the good side of the border. This is our fate, to protect our own freedoms and have solidarity with the free world. After thinking for a moment, he added that it was not luck; that it had been paid for with the blood of those who died in the 2014 uprising that drove a Moscow-backed government from Kyiv and of the 14,000 people who have died in the ensuing war. We have to fight for it, Mr. Kaliuk said.

Michael Schwirtzcontributed reporting from Mykolaiv.

Link:
How Putin Has Already Weakened Ukraines Economy - The New York Times

U.S. Army troops are preparing to move closer to Polands border with Ukraine to help process people fleeing the country after Russia launched an all-out assault, an Army spokesman said on Thursday, as Poland said it was ready to provide shelter to anyone fleeing the conflict.

Many of the 5,500 troops who arrived in Poland this month have been working with Polish forces to set up three processing centers near the border to help deal with tens of thousands of people, including Americans, who are expected to flee neighboring Ukraine.

American officials have estimated that a nationwide attack on Ukraine could result in one million to five million refugees, with many of them going to Poland. That could lead to the largest arrival of refugees in Europe since more than one million migrants and refugees arrived in 2015, a dynamic that had a profound effect on European politics by bolstering far-right parties.

Until Thursday, officials had seen barely a trickle of people come through the sites. But the flow is expected to grow as the conflict intensifies and expands.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said that U.S. troops will not fight in Ukraine or rescue Americans trapped there by a Russian attack. But American commanders and their counterparts in Poland have been preparing parts of several Polish facilities for possible evacuees.

In Jasionka, Poland, an indoor arena has been outfitted with bunk beds and supplies for up to 500 people, and U.S. officials say that capacity could be quickly expanded.

Polands border is open and the country is ready to host refugees from Ukraine, the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, told reporters on Thursday. Eight reception points where people fleeing Ukraine can seek food, medical assistance and information are already operational. Authorities said they were ready to transport refugees from those to other regions as needed.

We have been preparing for several weeks for a wave of refugees that might occur, Mr. Kaminski said. We will do everything to provide safe shelter in Poland for everyone who needs it.

Polands defense ministry introduced a higher alert level on Thursday, requiring soldiers from operational and territorial defense forces to stay in their units. All leave and business trips were canceled.

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US Troops in Poland Prepare for Arrival of Refugees From Ukraine - The New York Times