American servicemen will not fight in Ukraine if Russia decides to invade, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday, amid rising fears in Washington that war is around the corner.
Speaking to MSNBC, Kirby was responding to last week’s statement by President Joe Biden that American soldiers would not be flown into Kiev to evacuate US citizens located in Ukraine.
“The president has made it very clear that US troops will not be fighting in Ukraine,” Kirby reiterated. “[If] we put American forces in there, under the mission of helping evacuate Americans, you are absolutely raising the stakes of miscalculation and certainly increasing the possibilities that American troops and Russian troops would come into combat with each other.”
According to Kirby, this would make the situation kick off “to a whole new level.”