The U.S. will open a new air defense base in Europe on Wednesday, as many NATO members on the continent look on with trepidation as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House in January.
The missile defense base in Redzikowo, a town in northwestern Poland, close to the Baltic Sea, is the first permanent U.S. military base in the central European country, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.
Redzikowo is just under 100 miles from Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, where Moscow has a powerful military presence wedged between NATO members Poland and Lithuania.
Plans for the base were kicked off by President George W. Bush, and continued through Barack Obama‘s presidency, Donald Trump’s first term in office and were finished off by Joe Biden‘s administration, Sikorski said.