On Thursday Moscow issued a fresh warning to the US and West, following Washington and London giving the greenlight for Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles against Russian territory, which at this point has already happened in at least two instances (separate cross-border attacks using the US ATACMS and UK Storm Shadows).
Russia has said a newly opened US missile defense base in Poland is now on a list of potential priority strike targets in the event of a bigger escalation. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that the US-NATO anti-missile base in the Polish village of Redzikowo is a threat to Russia for its “obvious potential” to inflict harm on Moscow’s deterrent forces.
She said that the opening of the base marks “yet another provocative step in a series of deeply destabilizing actions by the Americans and their allies in NATO in the strategic sphere.”
She further described it as part of the “decades-long destructive policy of bringing NATO military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders” which can lead to the “undermining of strategic stability” – which can potentially bring to the forefront an increase in “the overall level of nuclear danger.”
Given “the nature and level of threats arising from this type of Western military facilities,” she continued, the base has been added to the Russian military’s list of “priority targets for potential destruction.”
As we previewed days ago upon the base’s formal inauguration, the US launchers hosted there that fire the Aegis interceptors can also fire offensive Tomahawk missiles. Previously, the US fielded a variant of the Tomahawk that was capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.
With the NATO and US military build-up in Eastern Europe, Moscow has long vowed that it would respond by “adopting appropriate measures to ensure parity.”
While the Aegis system has created significant friction between Russia and NATO, Warsaw wants to further expand the missile base. Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday the scope of the shield needed to be expanded.
Some Polish top officials have recently argued that the country’s military should be actively intercepting Russian missiles threatening Ukrainian territory, especially ones that fly close to Poland’s border in the region of Western Ukraine. Warsaw has throughout the conflict played host to a build-up of Western weapons along NATO’s ‘eastern flank’.
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