Senator Charles Grassley (R) says the U.S. is responding appropriately to the Ukraine-Russia tensions, albeit a couple months late as nearly 130,000 Russian troops have gathered north and east of Ukraine for a possible invasion.

President Joe Biden has deployed nearly 3,000 troops to eastern Europe to protect the eastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from the possibility of a Russian attack on Ukraine. Russia has denied accusations that it is planning an invasion, which could spiral into the largest military conflict on European soil in decades. Grassley says giving defensive weapons to Ukraine like other countries have done is a necessity, “I don’t know whether we need more American troops over there or not but they’re not going into Ukraine. They’re going into Poland and that’s more or less to send a signal to Russia, if he were to invade Ukraine he better not go any further. And that’s in line with our commitments of the last 70 years of our responsibility as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance which is a treaty to make sure World War III doesn’t happen again in Europe.”

Grassley co-chairs the Senate Baltic Freedom Caucus, who met with members of the Lithuanian Parliament and Lithuanian Ambassador to the U.S. last week to discuss the U.S. deployment. Grassley says their insights are particularly valuable as they were under Soviet Union control for 50 years. Lithuanian Parliament members shared with the senators about recent Russian cyber attacks against the Baltic States to sow distrust in Eastern Europe against the U.S. Russia recently gave the U.S. a list of demands in order to defuse the tension, including a ban on Ukraine entering NATO, and that NATO remove any troops or weapons deployed to countries that entered the alliance after 1997, which would include Poland and the Baltic States.