WARSAW – The US will officially open a new air defence base in northern Poland on Nov 13, as Warsaw seeks to reassure citizens that Nato guarantees their security amid jitters after Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.

       Situated in the town of Redzikowo near the Baltic coast, the base has been in the works since the 2000s and Warsaw says it symbolises the fact that its military alliance with Washington remains solid no matter who is in the White House.

       “It took a while, but this construction proves the geostrategic resolve of the United States,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in a video posted to social media platform X on Nov 12.

       “The Polish-American alliance is strong, regardless of who governs in Warsaw and Washington.”

       Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who has stressed his warm ties with Trump, is set to attend the base opening ceremony. On Nov 11, he told reporters that Trump had called him with greetings for Polish independence day.

       Trump’s past criticism has unnerved some Nato members, as he has vowed that under his leadership, the US would not defend countries that do not spend enough on defence.

       But Poland says the fact that it is the alliance’s biggest spender on defence relative to the size of its economy means it should have nothing to fear.

       Dubbed Aegis Ashore, the US base at Redzikowo is part of a broader Nato missile shield, which the alliance says is capable of intercepting short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

       Other key elements of the shield include a second Aegis Ashore site in Romania, along with US Navy destroyers based in the Spanish port of Rota and an early-warning radar in the Turkish town of Kurecik.

       Russian and Belarussian officials said they were watching the Nato base carefully and would factor it into their military planning.

       Moscow had already labelled it a threat to Russia as far back as 2007, when the base was still in the planning stages. Nato says the shield is purely defensive.

       The Redzikowo base was to some extent a “relic of a previous era”, however, analyst Marek Swierczynski from think-tank Polityka Insight told state news agency PAP, as it was designed with a threat from Iran in mind rather than one from Russia.

       Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Nov 11 that the scope of the shield needed to be expanded and Warsaw would discuss this with Nato and the US.

       Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte will meet Mr Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw later on Nov 13. REUTERS