WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland plans to choose the supplier for its medium-range missile defense system within the next few weeks, Deputy Defence Minister Czeslaw Mroczek said on Tuesday.

“In the next few weeks we will make the decision regarding the supplier for this system,” Mroczek told reporters.

Mroczek said the ministry’s experts will have worked out the details of a recommendation regarding the decision by the end of April.

Last year, Poland short-listed U.S. firm Raytheon and a consortium of France’s Thales and European group MBDA in its tender for a mid-range missile defense system, which is estimated to be worth about $5 billion.

Poland, a NATO member since 1999, had accelerated the process to select a supplier for the missile system after Russia’s intervention in Ukraine prompted concern among NATO members in eastern Europe.