Eight hundred pieces of American military equipment, including cars and tanks, arrived in Poland over the weekend and were unloaded at the port of Gdynia.
As part of the Atlantic Resolve operation, the equipment and American soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division will be stationed in the country and Europe for the next nine months, after which they will be replaced with other soldiers, Polish News reports.
This is the 20th transhipment of American equipment carried out at the terminal, said the commercial director of the BCT terminal, Michał Kużajczyk. “Equipment transshipments have been taking place since 2018. So far, exports have been the most common, but now the equipment that will be used in Poland has arrived,” he said.
After unloading, the new equipment is to be transported to the Port of Gdynia storage yard and in the next two weeks, it will be later delivered by trains and trucks to military bases located in various places in Poland, Kużajczyk said.
Next month, another floating unit with containers to be filled with 2,000 pieces of equipment of the 1st Infantry Division will arrive in Gdynia. Some will go to the country’s Eastern regions, where American troops will train together with the Polish army, as the TVN24 TV station reported.
Formed during World War I, the 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army is the oldest continuously operating division of the US Army. For over a hundred years of activity, the soldiers of the division took part in operations on the fronts of both world wars, the Vietnam Wars in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans. Since 2006, “Big Red One” has been stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas.
After Russia attacked Ukraine in February, NATO sent additional forces and equipment to the Eastern flank of the Alliance, including around 40,000 troops, according to Polish public broadcaster TVP.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | EURACTIV.pl)
Source: euractiv.com
