United States training Ukrainian troops in Poland, President Biden reveals

President Joe Biden appeared to reveal that the U.S. is training Ukrainian forces in Poland.

Biden was trying to clarify remarks he made on Friday, when he told American forces in Poland: “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle, in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground.’”

The suggestion that the US military would soon be in Ukraine led a White House official to quickly tell The Post that “the president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”

On Monday, under questioning from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, Biden insisted he had been misunderstood. “I was talking to the troops. We were talking about helping train the troops in, that are the Ukrainian troops that are in Poland,” he said. “That’s what the context [was]. I sat there with those guys for a couple hours. That’s what we talked about.”

“So, when you said, ‘You’re going to see when you’re there,’ you were not intending to send US troops?” Doocy asked. “I was referring to with, being with and talking with the Ukrainian troops who are in Poland,” the president insisted.

Gen. Todd Wolters, the head of U.S. European Command and NATO’s supreme allied commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that’s as far as the military-to-military interactions in Poland go.

“I do not believe that we are in the process of currently training military forces from Ukraine in Poland,” he said. “There are liaisons that are there that are being given advice, and that’s different than I think you’re referring to with respect to training.” 

“There are Ukrainian soldiers in Poland interacting on a regular basis with U.S. troops, and that’s what the President was referring to,” said a White House official.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) raised the possibility that Biden had revealed the existence of a classified US program in a public setting.

“It may be that he’s explaining secrets on national television,” Cruz told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Monday evening. “Every time he explains one thing, it gets worse and worse and worse, and we’ve got nuclear weapons pointed at each other. It is incredibly dangerous, this kind of presidential weakness.”