Poland Seeks Stationing U.S. Nuclear Weapons

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

WARSAW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Poland’s president says he has discussed with Washington transferring U.S. nuclear weapons to its territory as a deterrent against Russian aggression.

Andrzej Duda said he spoke about the issue with U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.

Poland has previously made clear it would be ready to host U.S. weapons under a nuclear arms-sharing program.

Additionally, Polish policymakers have recently expressed interest in French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to extend Paris’s nuclear umbrella to its European allies.

“Russia did not even hesitate when they were relocating their nuclear weapons into Belarus,” Duda told the Financial Times newspaper about actions Russia took beginning in 2023, a year after it invaded Ukraine. “They didn’t ask anyone’s permission.”

The White House did not immediately respond.

However, Trump has said the U.S. will defend NATO military alliance members such as Poland if they spend more on defense.

NATIONAL DEFENSE

Duda recently announced that his country plans to spend 4.7 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense this year.

He added that the national defense budget is expected to reach 30 billion euros ($32.5 billion), making it the largest among NATO countries. According to official figures, Poland already spends 4.1 percent of its GDP on defense.

This week, the Polish Prime Minister
Donald Tusk also said the government wants to launch a new program to offer voluntary military training starting next year, with a target of training 100,000 volunteers in 2027. “The most important thing for us is that every person interested can participate in such training no later than 2026. And that is a difficult task, but I know it is doable,” Tusk added.

“In 2027, we will achieve the ability to train 100,000 volunteers per year…
Apart from the professional army and beyond the Territorial Defence Force, we must de facto build an army of reservists, and our actions will serve this purpose.”

Poland’s concerns about Russia are rooted in its recent history: the country was occupied by Russian soldiers as a Soviet satellite state from the end of World War Two until 1993.

Adding nuclear weapons to its military deterrence is seen as crucial in Warsaw. Duda’s advisor on international affairs, Wojciech Kolarski, echoed the Polish president’s nuclear plea Thursday on Polish radio.

He said as a NATO member who shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad region, as well as war-torn Ukraine and Belarus, the atomic weapons steps were necessary for the security of Eastern Europe’s largest economy outside Russia.

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