Poland Set to Buy Patriot Missile System as Trump Visits Warsaw
(Bloomberg) —Poland’s government agreed to buy the Patriot missile defense system from the U.S., Polish state news agency PAP reported on Wednesday as President Donald Trump started his 16-hour visit to Warsaw.
In March, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said he planned to sign a contract, valued at less than 30 billion zloty ($8 billion), with Patriot producer Raytheon Co. by the end of the year. The first deliveries of the missile interceptors, which have been a source of tension between NATO and Russia, may take place within two years, he said then.
Poland, a formerly communist nation that shares a border with Russia, is one of the few NATO members that meet the alliance’s defense-spending target of 2 percent of economic output. Trump will meet his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on Thursday to discuss military and energy security before traveling to Germany for a meeting of the G-20 industrialized nations.
PAP didn’t reveal the source of its information, but said that Poland’s Defense Ministry will hold a news conference on Thursday about the deal with the U.S. Department of Defense.
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