WARSAW (Reuters) --- The United States
will store heavy military equipment at two sites in Poland from mid-2016,
Poland's defense minister said, a part of Washington's efforts to reassure
allies made uneasy by Russian actions in Ukraine.
The move will mark
the first time Washington has stored heavy
military equipment in the newer NATO member states in Eastern Europe and the
Baltics, which were once under the Soviet sphere of influence or were part of
the Soviet Union .
In June, a senior
Russian Defense Ministry official warned that Moscow
would strengthen its forces on its Western flank should the U.S. store heavy arms in the Baltic
states and eastern Europe.
"Following
reconnaissance, after talks with American partners, two sites have been
selected to store heavy equipment of the U.S. military - one in western Poland,
and one in north-eastern Poland," Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak
told state press agency PAP on Thursday. "We foresee that the
pre-positioning will take place in mid-2016."
He did not say what
kind of equipment would be sent to Poland or exactly where in each
region it would be stored. North-eastern Poland
borders on Belarus , a
nominal ally of Russia .
Siemoniak said that
he wants the ongoing talks with the U.S. to be concluded by the start
of October this year. The pre-positioning would be combined with the U.S. military
units' participation in military exercises, he said.
In June, a U.S. official
speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters that the Pentagon was poised to
store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons in the
region, enough for as many as 5,000 troops.
The official said
the proposal envisaged storing a company's worth of equipment, enough for about
150 soldiers, in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania ,
Latvia and Estonia .
Enough equipment
for a company or possibly a battalion, about 750 soldiers, would also be
located in Poland , Romania , Bulgaria
and possibly Hungary .
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