Source: (mil.ee)

More than half of U.S. citizens believe that the U.S. should send troops to defend the Baltic states in the event of a Russian invasion, the results of a recently conducted survey published by think tank Chicago Council on Global Affairs show.

In the survey, 52 percent of interviewed adult U.S. citizens said they would support the dispatching of U.S. troops to the NATO allies of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania if they were to come under Russian attack; in 2014 and 2015, support for the same was at just 44 and 45 percent, respectively.

In addition, 42 percent of respondents considered Russian military power a critical threat. Asked in 2002, just 23 percent of respondents answered the same.

The surveey of 2,020 respondents ove the age of 18 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia was conducted by GfK Custom Research from June 27-July 19. Chicago Council on Global Affairs published the results of the survey on Aug. 2.

Following Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, the U.S. sent a few hundred troops to each of the Baltic states and Poland. This year, multinational battalion-sized NATO battle groups have been deployed to the same countries as a part of the alliance’s Enhanced Forward Presence defense and deterrence posture on its eastern flank.

ERR