Russian missile movement alarms Baltic states, US
U.S. soldiers stand on May 26, 2010 in front of a Patriot missile battery at an army base in the northern Polish town of Morag. Polish and U.S. officials unveiled the first battery of U.S. surface-to-air Patriot-type missiles to be stationed on Polish soil, at the base just 40 miles from the Russian border.
The US, Poland and Lithuania expressed concern Monday after Russia announced that it plans to move its nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles to areas near European borders.
Newspaper reports state that Moscow has decided to move missiles to Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave that borders Poland and Lithuania.
Russia, for its part, claims that it has "every right" to send missiles to its far west, according to the BBC, as a response to the US European missile shield.
More from GlobalPost: US 'concern' over Russia missile plans
"We've urged Russia to take no steps to destabilize the region," said US State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf, according to Agence France-Presse.
"We certainly know the countries in the neighborhood have expressed concerns over it, and we'll keep talking to them about it," Harf said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that the Iskander missiles had been positioned somewhere in western Russia, but noted that that deployment failed to contradict any international treaties, reported the Associated Press.
"Missile troops and artillery units of the Western Military District are in fact armed with Iskander operational and tactical missile systems," said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov of the move, according to NBC News.
According to the Izvestia newspaper, the missiles have in fact been deployed in the western location for over a year.
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