Chris Lange, FISM News
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Among the cache of Pentagon papers circulating on social media is a March 23 document showing that the U.S. had 14 special forces on the ground in Ukraine in February and March, according to the New York Post.
The Guardian reported on Tuesday that leaked documents appeared to indicate that nearly 100 service members from a total of five Western nations, including the 14 U.S. service members, were operating in Ukraine in February and March.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told Fox News on Wednesday that a “small U.S. military presence” was dispatched to the American embassy in Kyiv to monitor military aid shipments from Washington. Kirby insisted that American service members “are not fighting on the battlefield.”
“I won’t talk to the specifics of numbers and that kind of thing. But to get to your exact question, there is a small U.S. military presence at the embassy in conjunction with the Defense Attachés office to help us work on accountability of the material that is going in and out of Ukraine,” Kirby said from the sidelines of President Joe Biden’s tour of Ireland.
“There has been no change to the president’s mandate that there will not be American troops in Ukraine fighting in this war,” Kirby continued. He added that the Biden administration is “making overt attempts to reach out to the relevant allies and partners to explain to them as best we know what we know.”
RUSSIA CLAIMS SUCCESSFUL TEST LAUNCH OF ‘ADVANCED’ ICBM
Newsweek reports that Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that it conducted a successful test launch of an “advanced” intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Tuesday. The claim follows Moscow’s withdrawal from the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the U.S. and on the heels of Russia’s announcement that it would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Sky News called the launch the “first successful public test” of such a weapon by Moscow since Russian President Vladimir Putin indefinitely suspended the New START nuclear pact with the U.S. The report included a video of the launch released by Russian officials.
UN INVESTIGATORS: BEHEADING OF UKRAINIAN POW ‘NOT AN ISOLATED INCIDENT’
Graphic and disturbing videos showcasing the brutality of Russian forces in Ukraine, including one that appeared to show the grisly beheading of a Ukrainian POW, have drawn widespread shock and condemnation.
“One of the videos shows a brutal execution of a man who appears to be a Ukrainian prisoner of war, while the other one shows mutilated bodies of apparent Ukrainian servicepersons,” the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in a statement Wednesday.
“Regrettably this is not an isolated incident,” it added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy concurred, saying that such atrocities have become “the norm” for Russia’s military.
“There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill. This video … the execution of a Ukrainian captive … the world must see it,” Zelenskyy said Wednesday, per The Washington Examiner.
“This is a video of Russia trying to make just that the new norm,” he continued. “Such a habit of destroying life. This is not an accident. This is not an episode. This was the case earlier. This was the case in Bucha. Thousands of times.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the disturbing nature of the video but suggested that it could be fake.
“First of all, it is necessary to verify the authenticity of this terrible video,” Peskov told reporters on Tuesday. “And then, of course, this can become a reason to check whether it was so, whether it took place, and if it did, where and by whom exactly. But again, I want to say that first of all, in the world of fakes in which we live now, it is necessary to verify the authenticity of this video.”