Tomasz Czescik, a Polish prehistorian and TV writer, strolls his canine every morning through a backwoods close to his home here on NATO’s eastern flank, meandering along the edge of a green steel fence finished off with razor wire.

He partakes in the natural air and morning calm until amplifiers on the opposite side of the fence, hung with Keep Out signs in Polish, English, German and Russian, begin shooting The Star-Spangled Banner at high volume.

I don’t know any individual who has at any point been inside there, Mr. Czescik said, pointing across the fence toward a bunch of fog covered structures somewhere far off.

The fence is the external edge, protected by Polish fighters, of an exceptionally touchy U.S. army base, expected to be functional this year, which Washington demands will assist with safeguarding Europe and the United States from long range rockets terminated by rebel states like Iran.

Yet, for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the army installation in Poland, and one more in Romania, are proof of what he considers the danger presented by NATO’s toward the east extension – and part of his avocation for his tactical enclosure of Ukraine. The Pentagon depicts the two destinations as guarded and random to Russia, however the Kremlin accepts they could be utilized to destroy Russian rockets or to fire hostile journey rockets at Moscow.

On Wednesday, Russia reported further troop withdrawals and Ukraine flagged an eagerness to do without its aspirations to join NATO, a basic issue in the current clash with Moscow. However, strains tightened up later in the day when a U.S. official said that Russian cases regarding a decreased troop presence were misleading and that there was new proof Moscow was assembling for war.

As he compromises Ukraine, Mr. Putin has requested that NATO decrease its tactical impression in Eastern and Central Europe – which Washington and European pioneers have straight wouldn’t do. Mr Putin has been raging with regards to American rockets close to Russia’s line since the Romanian site went into activity in 2016, however the Polish office, situated close to the town of Redzikowo, is around 100 miles from Russian domain and scarcely 800 miles from Moscow itself.

Are we sending rockets close to the U.S. line? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its rockets and is now remaining at our doorstep, Mr. Putin said in December at his yearly news gathering.

The Polish base, the core of which is a framework known as Aegis Ashore, contains refined radars fit for following threatening rockets and directing interceptor rockets to take them out of the sky. It is additionally outfitted with rocket launchers known as MK 41s, which the Russians stress can be effectively reused to fire hostile rockets like the Tomahawk.

For townspeople in Redzikowo, the possibility that they are inhabiting the front of Mr. Putin’s frequently expressed security concerns has effectively caused nerves for a few nearby occupants.

Ryszard Kwiatkowski, a structural designer who works in development, said a client who held a condo in another square his organization is fabricating as of late called to drop her arranged buy in light of stresses that Russia could strike the rocket guard office at Redzikowo and send property estimations through the floor.

No one truly imagines that is logical – it would place Russia into direct struggle with NATO, of which Poland has been a part beginning around 1999. In any case, suspicions of a brought together and tranquil Europe that grabbed hold with the finish of the Cold War are disintegrating as Russian soldiers mass on the line with Ukraine and the United States sends great many extra officers to Poland.

Mr Kwiatkowski, who partook in challenges the American office at Redzikowo when it was declared in 2016, said Russia had stirred up disquiet by misrepresenting the danger presented by NATO. Yet, he added, the two sides have made a self-driving machine of dread energized by nerve-clanking vulnerability over what the other is doing.

Thomas Graham, who filled in as ranking executive for Russia on President George W. Hedge’s National Security Council, said Moscow had never accepted Washington’s confirmations that its rocket guard framework was focused on Iran, not Russia. The issue, he added, had turned into a strong image for the Kremlin of a post-Cold War request that it sees as hazardously uneven and which it is presently attempting to amend through military dangers.

The current emergency is truly a lot more extensive than Ukraine, Mr. Graham said. “Ukraine is an influence point yet it is more with regards to Poland, Romania and the Baltics. The Russians think the time has come to modify the post-Cold War settlement in Europe in support of themselves.

In a gathering with Mr. Putin on Monday, Russia’s unfamiliar priest, Sergey V. Lavrov, underscored that Russia needed to see revolutionary changes in the circle of European security, expansive changes that go past only Ukraine to incorporate a pullback of NATO assembles now Eastern Europe, limits on the sending of hostile weaponry and limitations on middle reach rockets.

Tomasz Smura, head of exploration at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, a Warsaw research bunch, said, This is a tremendous issue for Russia

Yet, closing down the Redzikowo site, as Moscow needs, he added, is a red line that the United States and Poland won’t cross, however NATO, because of a rundown of requests made by Moscow in December, as of late offered conversation of a vague straightforwardness system in the desire for quieting Russian worries over the Polish and Romanian locales.