Polish archaeologist and television journalist Tomasz Czescik walks his dog through the woods near his home on the eastern side of NATO every morning, wandering around the edge of a green wire mesh fence covered with razor wire. I am.
He enjoys the fresh air and the quiet morning. Until the speakers on the other side of the fence were connected by the Polish, English, German, and Russian “Keep Out” signs and began to ring the “Star-Spangled Banner” in large numbers.
“No one knows who has been there,” Chesik pointed across the fence towards a horde of haze-covered buildings in the distance.
The fence is the perimeter of a highly sensitive US military facility protected by Polish soldiers and is expected to operate this year. Washington claims to help protect Europe and the United States from ballistic missiles launched by fraudulent nations like Iran.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Polish military base, and another Romanian base are evidence of what he sees as a threat posed by NATO’s eastern expansion, and his against the Ukrainian military siege. Is part of the justification. The Pentagon describes the two sites as defensive and unrelated to Russia, but the Kremlin used them to shoot down Russian rockets and launch offensive cruise missiles in Moscow. I think I can do it.
When he threatened Ukraine, Mr Putin demanded that NATO reduce its military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe — Washington and European leaders categorically rejected it. Putin has been making noise about American missiles near the Russian border since the Romanian site went live in 2016, but the Polish facility near the village of Redzikowo is only about 100 miles from Russian territory. Only 800 miles from Moscow itself.
“Are we deploying missiles near the border with the United States? No. It’s the United States that has come to our house with missiles and is already at our doorstep,” Putin said. He said at an annual press conference in December.
The Polish base, centered on a system known as Aegis Ashore, is equipped with advanced radar capable of tracking hostile missiles, guiding interceptor rockets and knocking them out of the sky. It is also equipped with a missile launcher known as the MK41s, which Russians are worried about being easily diverted to launch aggressive missiles like the Tomahawk.
For the villagers of Regikobo, the idea that they live at the forefront of Mr Putin’s frequently mentioned safety concerns has already caused anxiety for some locals.
Construction engineer Richard Kwiatkowski said the company booked an apartment in a new block under construction because of concerns that Russia might attack Ladykowo’s missile defense facility and send asset value. The customer recently called for cancellation of the planned purchase. Through the floor.
No one thinks it’s going to happen — it will put Russia in direct conflict with NATO, which Poland has been a member of since 1999. But with the end of the Cold War, the unified and peaceful European assumptions have collapsed as Russian troops. The masses on the border between Ukraine and the United States send thousands of additional soldiers to Poland.
Russia has exaggerated NATO’s threat and raised anxiety, said Kwiatkowski, who participated in a 2016 protest against Regikobo’s US facility. But he added that both sides created a “horror self-propelled machine,” supported by nerve-wracking uncertainties about what the other was doing.
Thomas Graham, Russia’s senior director at President George W. Bush’s National Security Council, has never believed in Washington’s guarantee that the missile defense system is aimed at Iran instead of Russia. Said. He added that the issue became a powerful symbol of the Kremlin, which it considered the post-Cold War Kremlin to be dangerous and one-sided and is now trying to fix it through military threats.
“The current crisis is far more widespread than Ukraine,” Graham said. “Ukraine is a leverage point, but it’s about Poland, Romania and the Baltic states. Russians think it’s time to revise their post-Cold War European reconciliation in their favor.”
In a meeting with Mr Putin on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergeĭ V. Labrov said that Russia had “a fundamental change in the field of security in Europe,” that is, a wide range of changes, including the withdrawal of Ukraine as well as NATO. I emphasized that I wanted to see it. Armies currently in Eastern Europe, restrictions on the deployment of offensive weapons and restrictions on intermediate-range missiles.
“This is a big problem for Russia,” said Tomasshusmura, head of research at the Kazimierz Plaskey Foundation, a research group in Warsaw.
But he added that closing the Redzikowo site, as Moscow wants, is a “red line” where the United States and Poland do not intersect. He has an unspecified “transparency mechanism” in the hope of calming Russia’s concerns about Polish and Romanian sites.
But Moscow wants more.
Missile defense has long been regarded by Russia as a dangerous American attempt to degrade the vast nuclear weapons that are the main guarantor of its great power status. The possibility of the United States shooting down Russian ballistic missiles undermines the deterrent doctrine of mutual assured destruction. This assumes that neither of the two largest nuclear-weapon states risk a nuclear war.
During the Cold War, both Russia and the United States worked on the development of missile defense, but in 1972 they agreed to abandon the rocket shield program to maintain mutual vulnerability and peace.
It worked for almost 30 years. However, at the end of Putin’s first year in office in December 2001, President George W. Bush urged the Pentagon to withdraw the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and build a system to avoid potential threats to the Pentagon. By directing, he infuriated the new Russian leader. Of missiles from Iran.
Putin’s belief that the withdrawal of the United States from what has been the basis of superpower relations for decades has since begun disillusionment with the United States and has unnecessarily trampled Russia’s interests. , Has been repeatedly quoted by the Kremlin.
“We have long tried to convince our partners not to do this,” Putin said in the Kremlin this month. “Nevertheless, the United States did what it did — withdrawal from the treaty. Ballistic missile launchers are now deployed in Romania and in Poland.”
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