(ANSA) - TRIESTE - Polish leaders welcomed a new multinational NATO battalion, with the president calling it "a historic moment for my country", AP reported.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said the deployment stands to Poles as a symbol of liberation and inclusion in the Western democratic world. "It's not an exaggeration to say that generations of Poles have waited for this moment since the end of the Second World War", Duda said in the northeastern town of Orzysz as he addressed the troops and the US and British ambassadors. Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz added the presence guarantees the security of NATO's eastern flank.

The battalion of about 1,000 troops is led by the United States, but includes troops from Britain and Romania. Croatian troops are expected to join later. Their base of operations, Orzysz, is 60 kilometers from the border with Kaliningrad, a Russian territory on the Baltic Sea separated from the Russian mainland. The NATO deployment is separate from a US battalion of 3,500 troops that arrived in Poland earlier this year and which is headquartered in southwestern Poland, near German border.

Both missions are responses to calls for greater US and NATO protection by a region fearful of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for a rebel insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The near-permanent deployment of a NATO battalion under Us command marks the first time NATO troops have been placed so close to Russian territory, a step the Kremlin denounces as a threat to its own security. (ANSA).