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The Romanian air base Mihail Kogălniceanu will be the largest NATO base in Europe.
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The $2.7 billion expansion will enable the base to support 10,000 NATO personnel and their families.
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It comes as Putin promised to go “to the end” in the war in Ukraine.
An air base just about 20 kilometers from the Black Sea coast and 300 kilometers from the war-torn city of Odesa in southern Ukraine is about to become the largest NATO base in Europe.
A $2.7 billion project to transform Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base in Romania began earlier this year.
The base, used by the US military since 1999, will be the size of a small city, with the capacity to house 10,000 NATO personnel and their families, Euro News Romania previously reported.
Nicolae Crețu, the air base commander, told the press that the expanded facility would require “maintenance hangars, fuel stores, ammunition, equipment, aeronautical engineering materials, simulators, feeding facilities and accommodation.”
“Everything necessary to support the operations and missions of a base of this size,” he said.
A fleet of Romanian F-16 fighter jets recently purchased from Norway, as well as MQ-9 Reaper drones, will also arrive at the base soon, the BBC reported.
NATO announced earlier this month that seven F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets from the Finnish Air Force landed at the base on June 3 to “conduct training and practical flights along the eastern flank of the Black Sea coast.”
“For two months, the Finnish fighter jets will join a Royal Air Force Typhoon detachment and will carry out rapid response alert services and fly alongside them and Romanian F-16s to jointly secure NATO airspace and assure the Romanian people” , says Lieutenant Cl. Rami Lindstrom. said the first commander of the Finnish detachment at the base.
“Our goal here in Romania is to improve our integration into the NATO Air Force by tightening and deepening our cooperation with the Royal Air Force and the Romanian Air Force,” he added.
The US presence at the base is also increasing, Royal Air Force pilot Flt Lt Charlie Tagg told the BBC, adding that there was “much more infrastructure, accommodation, people and equipment”.
Dorin Popescu, a geopolitical analyst, previously told Euronews: “The Mihail Kogălniceanu base will become NATO’s main permanent military structure in the immediate vicinity of the conflict in southern Ukraine.”
“Let us not imagine that this conflict will end this year in 2025 or in 2026,” he said. “It’s a long-term conflict.”
However, Russian politicians have issued stark warnings about the project, with Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee, previously warning it was a “threat” to Bucharest.
“If the Romanians like it, that is of course their business, but the NATO suicide club drags ordinary citizens into such adventures that can end very badly for their families and children,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin justified his massive invasion of Ukraine by saying that NATO has aggressively expanded closer to Russia in recent decades, and he has long warned against further expansion.
Despite its rhetoric, NATO has continued to creep further east, with Finland joining NATO in April 2023 and Sweden in March 2024.
Nevertheless, Putin renewed his threats to the West this week, promising to go “to the end” in the war with Ukraine.
A defeat in Ukraine, Putin said, would mean “the end of the thousand-year history of the Russian state. I think this is clear to everyone… Isn’t it better to see it through to the end?” he said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
