Poland Signs U.S. Patriot Missiles Deal, Irritating Russia

Poland on Wednesday signed off on a $4.75 billion deal to buy the latest Patriot air and missile defense system, a move to upgrade the country’s air defenses that took years to negotiate, Bloomberg reports.

The Polish government signed a letter of offer and acceptance with the United States for the first phase of Warsaw’s Wisla program, a two-part procurement of the medium-range, integrated air and missile defense system, according to a statement from U.S. defense contractor Raytheon.

The system includes Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS), and Lockheed Martin’s Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles, according to separate company statements.

“It’s a historic moment,” President Andrzej Duda said Wednesday. “We’re fitting the Polish army with the most advanced defense system in the world.”

Warsaw is concerned about Russia’s expansive policy toward Eastern Europe, whose countries shrugged off the Kremlin’s Soviet-era domination before most of them joined the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Poland, which shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, hosts U.S. troops on its territory and sees the missile system as a step toward strengthening the military alliance’s eastern flank.

Traditionally warm relations between the U.S. and Poland, the biggest formerly communist nation in the EU and NATO, have frayed this year after Warsaw passed a law criminalizing suggestions that the Polish nation was responsible for any crimes during the Holocaust.

In December, the State Department in Washington said a fine imposed by a Polish regulator on a U.S.-owned news broadcaster for how it covered anti-government protests in Warsaw “appeared to undermine media freedom.” The penalty was eventually dropped.