Poland hails opening of US missile base as sign of its security

The United States opened a new air defense base in northern Poland on Wednesday, an event the European nation's president said showed the country was secure as a member of NATO even as Russia wages war in neighboring Ukraine, Report informs via Reuters.

Situated in the town of Redzikowo near the Baltic coast, the base has been in the works since the 2000s.

At a time when Donald Trump's election victory has caused jitters among some NATO members, Warsaw says the continued work on the base by successive US presidents shows Poland's military alliance with Washington remains solid whoever is in the White House.

The United States... is the guarantor of Poland's security," President Andrzej Duda said.

He said the permanent presence of US troops at the base showed that Poland, a communist state until 1989, was "not in the Russian sphere of influence".

The Kremlin on Wednesday called the base a bid to contain Russia by moving American military infrastructure nearer its borders.

The opening comes amid a nervous reaction among some NATO members to the election of Trump, who has vowed not to defend countries that do not spend enough on defense.

However, Poland says it should have nothing to fear as it is the alliance's biggest spender on defense relative to the size of its economy, and conservative Duda has stressed his warm ties with Trump.

The US base at Redzikowo is part of a broader NATO missile shield, dubbed "Aegis Ashore", which the alliance says can intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

Other key shield elements include a site in Romania, US navy destroyers based in the Spanish port of Rota and an early-warning radar in Kurecik, Türkiye.