Romania will place 24 American ballistic missile launchers on it territory. The plans have been confirmed by the country's President Traian Basescu.
“With the appearance of the ABM system, Romania will get the guarantee of being safe from any missile attacks,” he said, stressing that “this will be a defensive system which couldn’t be transformed into an offensive one.”
Basescu also noted that all the gossip over the supposed danger from such systems is “propagandistic.”
This system is part of President Obama’s revamped anti-ballistic missile shield, which is intended to start operating in 2015.
Washington says it's designed to counter the threat from Iran.
But Russia has criticized the shield, saying US missiles near its borders are a danger to its security.
However, Mikhail Troitsky from the Moscow State University of International Relations doesn’t think these deployments constitute a grave threat to Russia.
“This is definitely not a threat, this is just a risk that may materialize into something worse in the few years, but it is not still a strategic missile defense system and this is very long term,” he told RT. “And it clearly has the potential to derail US-Russian negotiations on a new START treaty, if both sides react gravely to that deployment.”