WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s president has called on the U.S. to transfer nuclear weapons to its territory as a deterrent against future Russian aggression, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.
President Andrzej Duda also told the newspaper he had discussed the proposal recently with U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.
Poland has previously said it would be ready to host U.S. weapons under a nuclear arms sharing programme, and Polish policymakers have also more recently expressed interest in an idea floated by French President Emmanuel Macron that Paris’s nuclear umbrella could be extended to its European allies.
“The borders of NATO moved east in 1999, so 26 years later there should also be a shift of the NATO infrastructure east. For me this is obvious,” the FT cited Duda as saying in an interview.
It would be safer if those weapons were already in the country, Duda added.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political opponent of Duda, said on Thursday he thought it was better to address such issues discreetly rather than in media interviews, although he added that he believed the president had good intentions.
“We should formulate certain expectations… publicly when we are certain, or have reasons to be convinced, that such appeals or calls will be heard and that the addressee, in this case the American administration, President Trump, is prepared for a positive response,” Tusk told reporters.
Galvanised by Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine three years ago, Poland now spends a higher proportion of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence than any other NATO member, including the United States.
Last year Poland’s defence spending reached 4.1% of GDP, according to NATO estimates, and it plans to hit 4.7% this year. Duda has suggested enshrining defence spending of at least 4% of GDP in the Polish constitution.
(Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru, Pawel Florkiewicz and Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Gareth Jones)
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