The United States is opening a new missile base in northern Poland, which the Kremlin criticised as an attempt “to contain” Russia by moving US military infrastructure closer to its borders.
Located in the town of Redzikowo near the Baltic coast, the major base that will be formally inaugurated on Wednesday has been in the works since the 2000s.
As Poland seeks to reassure its citizens of NATO’s commitment to their security following Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, it said the base shows that its military alliance with Washington remains solid, whoever is in the White House.
The base is about 250km (155 miles) from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
“It took a while, but this construction proves the geostrategic resolve of the United States,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in a video posted on social media platform X on Tuesday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who has stressed his warm ties with Trump, was set to attend the opening ceremony alongside NATO representatives.
The Kremlin said the deployment of the missile defence system in Poland showed “American military infrastructure advancing towards our borders” as “part of an attempt to contain Russia militarily”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned on Wednesday that Russia will take measures to ensure “parity” in response, but did not specify what that would be.
“Of course, this requires the adoption of appropriate measures to maintain parity,” Peskov told reporters, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
Trump’s past criticisms have unsettled some NATO members, as he pledged that the US under his leadership would not defend countries that fail to invest adequately in defence.
As NATO’s highest defence spender relative to the size of its economy, Poland maintains it has little to worry about.
Readying for Trump
The base at Redzikowo is part of a broader NATO missile shield, called Aegis Ashore, which the military alliance says can intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Other key shield elements include a second site in Romania, US Navy destroyers based in the Spanish port of Rota and an early-warning radar in the town of Kurecik in Turkey.
Russia had already labelled the base in Poland a threat as far back as 2007, when it was still being planned.
NATO says the shield is purely defensive.
Military sources told the Reuters news agency the system in Poland can only be used against missiles fired from the Middle East and the radar would need a change in direction to intercept projectiles from Russia, a complex procedure entailing a change of policy.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday the scope of the shield needed to be expanded, which Warsaw would discuss with NATO and the US.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was set to meet Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw later on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met NATO, European Union, and Ukrainian officials to discuss ramping up support for Ukraine before Trump returns to the White House, amid fears this would jeopardise future aid.
The US will “continue to shore up everything we’re doing for Ukraine to make sure that it can effectively defend itself against this Russian aggression”, Blinken told reporters at the NATO headquarters.
Trump has criticised the administration of President Joe Biden for providing Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in aid and has pledged to swiftly end the conflict – without saying how. Ukraine’s international backers worry that a hastily arranged settlement would primarily favour Russian President Vladimir Putin.