WARSAW (Reuters) -America will formally open a brand new air defence base in northern Poland on Wednesday, as Warsaw seeks to reassure residents that NATO ensures their safety amid jitters after Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
Located within the city of Redzikowo close to the Baltic coast, the bottom has been within the works for the reason that 2000s and Warsaw says it exhibits Poland’s army alliance with Washington stays strong, whoever is within the White Home.
“It took some time, however this development proves the geostrategic resolve of america,” Polish International Minister Radoslaw Sikorski mentioned in a video posted to X on Tuesday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who has harassed his heat ties with Trump, will attend a operate to open the bottom, which the Kremlin calls a bid to include Russia by transferring American army infrastructure nearer its borders.
Trump’s previous criticism has unnerved some NATO members, as he vowed that america beneath his management wouldn’t defend international locations that don’t spend sufficient on defence.
Nevertheless, Poland says it ought to don’t have anything to worry, because the alliance’s largest spender on defence relative to the scale of its financial system.
MISSILE SHIELD
The U.S. base at Redzikowo is a part of a broader NATO missile defend, dubbed “Aegis Ashore”, which the alliance says can intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Different key defend parts embrace a second website in Romania, U.S. navy destroyers based mostly within the Spanish port of Rota and an early-warning radar in Turkey’s city of Kurecik.
Moscow had already labelled the bottom a risk way back to 2007, when it was nonetheless being deliberate.
NATO says the defend is only defensive.
Navy sources informed Reuters the system in Poland can now solely be used in opposition to missiles fired from the Center East and the radar would wish a change in route to intercept projectiles from Russia, a posh process entailing a change of coverage.
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Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz mentioned on Monday the scope of the defend wanted to be expanded, which Warsaw would talk about with NATO and america.
NATO Secretary Normal Mark Rutte will meet Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw afterward Wednesday.