US opens air defense base in Poland

The United States will officially open a new air defense base in northern Poland on Wednesday, November 13. The facility is located in the town of Redzikowo near the Baltic coast. Polish officials announced the opening, Reuters reports.

The base has been in the works since the 2000s, and Warsaw says it symbolizes the fact that its military alliance with Washington remains strong, no matter who is in the White House.

"It took some time, but building [the base] proves the geostrategic resolve of the United States," — Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in a video posted on the X social network on Tuesday, November 12.

The US base in Redzikowo is part of NATO's wider Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System (AAMDS) missile shield, which the alliance says can intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

Other key elements of the shield include a second AAMDS base in Romania, US Navy destroyers based in the Spanish port of Rota, and an early warning radar in the Turkish town of Kurecik.

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Previously, the US military has emphasized that Aegis Ashore is “defensive in nature and designed to address threats to US forward forces or the security of our European allies,” which is supported by US commitments to NATO and current NATO policy.

Russian and Belarusian officials have said they are closely monitoring the NATO base and will take it into account in their military planning.

Moscow already called the Polish facility a threat to Russia back in 2007, when the base was in the planning stage. NATO has emphasized that AAMDS is purely defensive in nature.

Marek Swierczynski, an analyst at the Polityka Insight center, told the state news agency PAP that the Redzikowo base is to some extent a “relic of a bygone era.” it was designed with the threat from Iran in mind, not Russia.

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday, November 11, that the shield's scope needed to be expanded, and Warsaw would discuss it with NATO and the United States.

Prepared by: Sergey Daga