According to the document, the US states its readiness to discuss "a transparency mechanism to confirm the absence fo Tomahawk cruise missiles at Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland, provided Russia offers reciprocal transparency measures
tass.com
Looks like inspection of the Aegis Ashore in Poland and Romania, to confirm they cannot/do not house Tomahawks, is on the table as part of the efforts to deescalate things with Russia.
Definitely a good idea; proving we are not putting first strike/offensive weapons in those installations would probably help ease Russian paranoia over them.
Nice if true and not a ploy to get a freebie or play for time.
The whole thing with Russian protests about Aegis Ashore is that they are a huge stretch, and as such, probably meant to be an "issue" made out of nothing and sound like a proxy concern for issues that would sound bad if talked about openly.
Firstly, USA used to have nuclear Tomahawks. On trucks. In Italy, UK and many other countries.
en.wikipedia.org
Retired under INF. Now Russians can claim that this hacked naval launcher system could take naval nuclear Tomahawks... But USA doesn't operate those anymore either and no one questions that.
Are Russians thinking that USA has built a huge, obvious, stationary facility with very expensive radars meant for missile defense, in order to make no use of them and instead sneakily fill the paltry 24 launch tubes with conventional Tomahawks, because reasons?
Considering the sheer amount of potential positions for Tomahawks to reach Moscow (anywhere from UK-west France-Italy line or closer will do), there are many ways for USA to put way more tubes of them within range, cheaper, and more sneakily.
Frankly if Russians have let paranoia eat their brains that badly, and if they are willing to agree to the counter-proposal, its a great deal for NATO.
Warsaw has expressed willingness to allow Russian inspectors into its country to check American air defense facilities on Polish soil
www.rt.com
“Polish officials said the government is open to missile-defense inspections on the condition that Russia allows inspection of Russian missile activities in Kaliningrad, a heavily militarized Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea that borders Poland and Lithuania,” the Wall Street Journal report says.
What i would suspect is the real objection to these facilities from Russia? Something much grander, as shown by their earlier demands to remove *all* US forces from the former WP countries. The nature of these forces and any worries about missiles are just fluff. What really irks them is that the forces are there, and in case of the ABM facilities, that these are immobile and somewhat important facilities that cannot be freely thrown away in the future. The problem with that is that presence of these is an excellent "tripwire" that in turn convinces the governments of Poland and Romania that USA will not be able to easily withdraw from NATO obligations to defend them...
And that in turn means that these governments will take the usual threatening behavior that Russia uses for all kinds of negotiations less seriously, directly reducing Russia's *persuasion power* in its political relations with these countries in this way, for as long as such bases exist and are relevant in military terms.
