US military storage site planned in Poland: WSJ

The USD 260 million facility will be built at Powidz Air Base in the west-centre of the country and will house armoured vehicles, ammunition and weapons for a brigade of troops, the Journal has reported.

The move is in line with Washington’s strategy for quickly deploying troops in Europe in case of a Russian incursion, the US newspaper reported.

Work to build the site will start in the summer and take two years to complete, according to the paper.

It cited NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg as saying that the new facility would "underpin the increased US presence in Poland."

More than 1,500 US troops from Fort Bliss, Texas, arrived in north-western Poland last week for several weeks of joint exercises with Polish soldiers.

Amid fears of Russian aggression following Moscow's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014, NATO decided at a Warsaw summit in July 2016 to deploy four rotating multinational battalions to Poland and the Baltic states.

Warsaw has in recent months been making intense efforts to secure a boosted American troop presence on NATO’s eastern flank.

Poland this month marked exactly two decades since it became a member of the Western military alliance together with the Czech Republic and Hungary.

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Source: IAR, wsj.com