Polish PM reassures residents over US missile base

Poland’s prime minister tonight sought to reassure worried residents near the site of a planned US missile defence base.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk told them that the base would make their city and the country as a whole more secure, despite threats from an angry Russia.

Before facing residents at a meeting in the city of Slupsk, Mr Tusk visited the former Polish air base in Redzikowo that is to host the facility.

“In case of war, Redzikowo and Slupsk will be more secure than other places, and not less secure,” Mr Tusk told reporters.

Still, some people in Slupsk – a city of 100,000 about three miles away - needed more convincing.

One person at the three-hour meeting in a theatre could be heard shouting that “you condemned Redzikowo and Slupsk to annihilation like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”