President of Poland Andrzej Duda said at a press conference held on Wednesday in Madrid said the decision to establish permanent headquarters of U.S. 5th Army was something his country had been waiting for a long time, and that it would significantly increase Poland's security.
U.S. President Joe Biden's commitment to establish the 5th Army's Headquarters in Poland significantly increases the country's safety, the Polish president said on Wednesday. "It is a fact that strengthens our safety a lot and is an additional guarantee in the difficult situation which we are in," Andrzej Duda told a news conference and Madrid following a NATO summit.
The Polish leader also said that additional 300 U.S. Army officers would be stationed in Poland as part of the 5th Army Headquarters.
"We've managed to keep unity. The North-Atlantic Alliance is unity and solidarity. There is a green light for Sweden and Finland to join the NATO, and that is certainly an absolutely historic decision from the point of view of the whole Alliance," the president said.
"Two very powerful countries, having rich history, but also very serious military background, that is Sweden and Finland, both Baltic Sea basin countries, will join the North-Atlantic Alliance, which primarily means that the eastern flank of NATO, the part of this flank bordering Russia, is being extended by more than 1,600 kilometres," Duda added.
NATO Summit in Madrid
Poland on Wednesday hailed U.S. President Joe Biden's commitment to establish the 5th Army's Headquarters in Poland as the realisation of a long-held dream that would send a clear signal of deterrence to Russia.
Biden told a NATO summit in Madrid earlier on Wednesday that the United States will ramp up its forces and equipment across Europe and set up a new permanent army headquarters in Poland in response to potential new threats from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
NATO also branded Russia the most "direct threat" to allied security after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and vowed to modernise the beleaguered Ukrainian military, saying it stood four-square with Kyiv in "the heroic defence of their country".
Completing a summit dominated by the geopolitical upheaval caused by the invasion, NATO formally invited Sweden and Finland to join the alliance and pledged to reinforce combat-ready and rapid-reaction forces on its eastern flank, closest to Russia.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, TVN24
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