Russia building up military sites across Polish border: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
11.07.2018 13:10
Satellite photos appear to show that Russia has built up military sites in its westernmost region of Kaliningrad, near the Polish border, ahead of a NATO summit, according to a report.
![Baltiysk, Kaliningrad District, Russia. Photo: Anton Yefimov [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://external.polskieradio.pl/files/45ccd297-69d6-4fac-82df-e0e458a2a42f.file "Baltiysk, Kaliningrad District, Russia. Photo: Anton Yefimov [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Baltiysk, Kaliningrad District, Russia. Photo: Anton Yefimov [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Photos show new structures and other bunker improvements in the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad made in the run-up to the NATO summit starting in Brussels on Wednesday, the US-based defenseone.com website reported this week.
The photos, by a satellite imaging company, show that Russia made several improvements to a munitions storage site in Baltiysk, near the Polish border, between March and June, according to defenseone.com.
British newspaper The Guardian in June cited the Federation of American Scientists as saying that newly published satellite images appeared to reveal that Russia had upgraded a nuclear weapons storage bunker in Kaliningrad in recent months.
In February, Russian daily Vedomosti reported that the necessary infrastructure had been put in place for the deployment of Iskander-M missile systems, according to Poland’s niezalezna.pl website.
A Russian military expert was quoted as saying in November that Russia would aim its Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad exclave at a US military base in Redzikowo, northern Poland.
Countries neighbouring Russia, among them Poland, have long warned that the Kremlin is destabilising the situation in the Kaliningrad region, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in November 2016 that "the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad is yet another example of a Russian military buildup close to NATO borders.”
NATO leaders meeting at a summit in Warsaw in July 2016 decided to deploy four multinational battalions to Poland and three Baltic states amid fears of potential Russian aggression following Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, defenseone.com