The US will officially open a new air defence base in northern Poland’s Redzikowo near the Baltic Sea on Wednesday, the 13th of November, as Warsaw tries to reassure people that NATO guarantees their security amid anxiety following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, reports Reuters.
The base has been under construction since 2000 and Warsaw says it shows that Poland’s military alliance with Washington is solid regardless of who is in the White House.
“It took time, but this construction proves the geostrategic commitment of the United States,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in a video published on Tuesday on X.
Poland’s conservative President Andrzej Duda, who has stressed his warm relations with Trump, will attend the base’s inauguration in what the Kremlin calls an attempt to contain Russia by moving US military infrastructure closer to its borders.
The US base in Redzikowo is part of a wider NATO missile shield called Aegis Ashore, which the alliance says can intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. Other key elements of the shield include a second site in Romania, US naval fighters in the Spanish port of Rota and an early warning radar in the Turkish city of Kurecik.
Moscow had already indicated in 2007, when the base was still being planned, that it was a threat. NATO says the shield is only a defensive measure.
According to military officials, Poland’s missile defence system is currently aimed at threats from the Middle East, but a shift to intercepting Russian missiles would require a change in policy, which Warsaw would have to discuss with NATO and the US.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will meet Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw later on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meeting NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels, assured NATO that the Biden administration will step up its support to Ukraine
in the months leading up to Trump’s presidency and will seek to strengthen the alliance during that time.
On the deployment of North Korean troops to support Russia in the conflict, Blinken told reporters that Moscow’s relations with Pyongyang are a “two-way street” and that there is “deep concern about what Russia is doing, or could do, to strengthen North Korea’s capabilities”, including its nuclear capabilities.
North Korea’s troop deployment “demands and will receive a firm response”, he said.
President-elect Trump has raised concerns by questioning US military support to Ukraine and promising a swift end to the Russian war, but without explaining how. Biden will leave office on the 20th of January.
Rutte said that “Russia has not won” Ukraine, which it invaded in February 2022.
“Obviously we need to do more to ensure that Ukraine can stay in the fight and is able to repel the Russian attack and not allow (President Vladimir) Putin to succeed in Ukraine,” he said.
After meeting Rutte at the alliance’s headquarters, Blinken said they discussed the ongoing support to Ukraine as Russian forces make gains on the eastern front lines and the work NATO needs to do to strengthen its defence industrial base.