(VOVworld) – The US has deployed 600 soldiers to Poland and the Baltic countries, in a bid to exert more pressure on Russia over Ukraine and express solidarity with its allies in Eastern Europe.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby. (Photo: Getty Image)

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said on Tuesday that 150 soldiers from the US Airborne Brigade 173, stationed in Vicenza, Italy, would arrive in Poland on Wednesday. Another 450 soldiers will arrive in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia over the next few days. Kirby reiterated that this move was part of the US’s new joint military exercise with its Eastern European allies, “planned for the next few months and the future”, and reaffirms Washington’s pledges to European security. Although Kirby kept open the possibility of NATO members joining the exercise and that the exercises could last until 2015, he said that this exercise was a co-operative US military exercise with their partner nations.