Some of these actions would continue concerning trend lines that United States've seen in recent years, but some could be of a different scope and scale.

John Kirby

We still are trying to learn more about these two individuals, it's appalling that a public official in Russia would even suggest the death penalty for two American citizens that were in Ukraine. And we're going to continue to try and learn what we can about this.

So, in addition to the GCC meeting, there'll be a series of bilateral discussions as there are on the sidelines of all cooperation councils and summits. He will have a bilateral meeting with King Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and King Salman's leadership team, and the Crown Prince is on that leadership team. So you can expect that he'll see the Crown Prince while he's there.

It's counterterrorism, it's climate change, certainly it's oil production, obviously, it's going to be on the agenda. And, a big item on the agenda is the war in Yemen.

This is just one example, we’re watching this across the board. We’ve seen these kinds of activity by the Russians in the past.

We do have information that the Russians are likely to want to fabricate a pretext for an invasion, which, again, is right out of their playbook.

We believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment, at the hands of Ukraine, or the West.

He clearly is providing himself many options, lots more capabilities for exactly what purpose? We don't know right now. And because we don't know exactly what his purpose is, we want to make sure we're ready on the NATO front to defend our allies.

This force is designed to deter aggression and enhance our defensive capabilities, and we expect them, as I said, to move in the coming days.

The current situation demands that we reinforce the deterrent and defensive posture on NATO's eastern flank.

We do not believe conflict is inevitable, the United States in lockstep with our allies and partners, has offered Russia a path to de-escalate.

This is not a sum total of the deterrence actions we will take or those to reassure our allies, we stand united. We have said that repeatedly. We say it again today. These movements are unmistakable signals to the world that we stand ready to reassure our NATO allies and deter and defend against any aggression.

The secretary heard from personnel across the force about the need to update and clarify this policy during the standdowns that he directed earlier this year, that was one of the common bits of feedback that we got, was that they wanted more clarity. And so we tried to do that with this new instruction.

Our civilian workers here, they take their jobs very seriously, they take their obligations to their families and their coworkers very seriously and I think we have every expectation that they too will continue to seek and pursue getting vaccinated, there are a range of administrative tools that leaders here at Defense Department would have to make sure that our civilian workers are likewise getting the vaccine.

Thus far, and going forward, it does require constant coordination and deconfliction with the Taliban, what we’ve seen is, this deconfliction has worked well in terms of allowing access and flow as well as reducing the overall size of the crowds just outside the airport.

Obviously, force protection is a high priority, we're always evaluating the threat. It's not only a day-by-day thing, it's an hour-by-hour thing.

The fact that we are flying overwatch missions now, and have been since the 14th – we were actually doing it before the 14th, force protection is a high priority, and we’re going to have at our disposal all the assets and resources necessary to make sure we can accomplish this mission safely and efficiently, just like we were accomplishing the previous mission of drawdown safely and efficiently.

Protection is the prudent and responsible thing to do.

I would just let the results speak for themselves so far and we're not taking anything for granted.

Our expectation is that if an individual doesn't want to take the vaccine that we're going to provide them some counseling.

We're still examining possibilities for overseas locations to include some departmental installations that would be capable of supporting planned relocation efforts with appropriate temporary residences and supporting infrastructure.