Trump, criticized by European veterans after statements about the role played by allies in Afghanistan: “We paid in blood for this alliance”

Veterans in Europe on Friday rejected President Donald Trump's claims about the contribution of US allies in the Afghanistan campaign, noting that hundreds of their comrades have died fighting alongside US forces, according to Reuters.

“We expect an apology for this statement,” Roman Polko, a retired Polish general and former commander of special operations forces who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.

Trump “crossed a red line,” he added. “We paid in blood for this alliance. We truly sacrificed our own lives,” Polko pointed out.

British Veterans Affairs Minister Alistair Carns, whose military service included five tours of duty, including with US troops in Afghanistan, dismissed Trump's claims as “absolutely ridiculous”.

“We have shed blood, sweat and tears together. Not everyone has returned home,” the British official said in a video message on the X platform.

Richard Moore, the former head of Britain's spy service, said he and many other MI6 officers had operated in dangerous environments with “brave and highly regarded” CIA counterparts and that he was proud to take part in these missions with Britain's closest ally.

Article 5, invoked only once by the US

Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty, which states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all, was invoked only once, after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 9, 2001, when the allies responded by joining the United States in the Afghanistan campaign.

On Thursday, in an intervention on Fox News, US President Donald Trump said that the help of the allies was not necessary and that their troops “stood a little further back, a little further from the front line”, The Guardian noted.

Trump was also criticized by high-ranking politicians for these claims. One of them is British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said the US leader “was wrong to downplay the role of NATO troops” in the two decades of war.

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz also said Poland's sacrifice “will never be forgotten and should not be minimized”.