Both the United States and the EU have ruled out deploying troops from individual NATO members against Russia.

US President Joe Biden has no intention of sending US troops to Ukraine, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. However, while NATO forces may not be openly fighting the Russians, an unknown number of US military personnel are said to be active in the war-torn region of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the EU has rejected the idea of any such military mission. The Director General of the European Union Military Staff, Vice Admiral Hervé Blazian, has said that neither Europe nor NATO can send their troops to Ukraine, saying that sending troops to Ukraine means being a party to the war, going to war with Russia.

However, the Pentagon acknowledged in November that a “small number” of US forces were guarding and monitoring the US embassy in Kiev. In April, leaked Pentagon documents also revealed that as of mid-March, 14 US special forces personnel had been deployed to Ukraine and 50 military special forces had been deployed from Britain.

Meanwhile, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, a missile attack on a temporary Ukrainian armed forces base in the city of Donbass killed “20 foreign mercenaries and military advisers,” and photos and videos circulated on social media after the attack allegedly showed English-speaking military personnel in US uniforms dead and wounded at the base.

Moscow considers the US and NATO complicit in the conflict, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the West of not wanting to end the war against Russia “until the last Ukrainian remains alive”.