Russia has added the recently opened US missile defense base in Poland to its list of possible priority strike targets due to its “obvious potential” to weaken Moscow’s deterrent forces, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
During a weekly briefing on Thursday, Zakharova was asked to comment on the official opening of the US-NATO anti-missile base in the Polish village of Redzikowo last week and the statements by Warsaw that this facility is directly aimed against Russia.
The spokeswoman replied that the opening of the base is “yet another provocative step in a series of deeply destabilizing actions by the Americans and their allies in NATO in the strategic sphere.”
Zakharova stated that the move is part of the “decades-long destructive policy of bringing NATO military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders” and leads to the “undermining of strategic stability” and an increase in strategic risks and “the overall level of nuclear danger.”
She noted that the facility in Redzikowo has an “obvious potential” to weaken Russia’s deterrent forces and that given “the nature and level of threats arising from this type of Western military facilities,” the base has been added to the list of “priority targets for potential destruction.”
The spokeswoman added that such facilities could be destroyed by Russia using “a wide range of the latest weapons.”
The Aegis Ashore facility on the Baltic Sea coast was initially proposed in the early 2000s, after the US repudiated the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty. Washington had assured Moscow at the time that the future bases in Romania and Poland were not aimed against Russia but against “rogue states” such as Iran or North Korea.
However, speaking at the opening ceremony of the Redzikowo base last week, Polish President Andrzej Duda admitted that the defense facility was not about intercepting ballistic missiles from Iran, as had been previously claimed, but was aimed at moving Poland out of Russia’s zone of influence and closer to the US.
Moscow has also long maintained that Washington’s claims about the true purpose of the Aegis bases were disingenuous and that they were being used to expand NATO infrastructure eastwards and meant to be aimed against Russia.
After the opening of the base, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov vowed that Moscow would respond by “adopting appropriate measures to ensure parity.”