President Andrzej Duda called for NATO to focus on Eastern Europe: "Russia did not hesitate when it decided to relocate its atomic weapons to Belarus," he recalled.
The President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, has called on the United States to transfer nuclear weapons to its territory as an act of deterrence against any attempt at aggression by Russia, arguing that the advance towards the east of NATO's borders must be accompanied by “an eastward shift in NATO’s infrastructure.”
"NATO's borders shifted eastward in 1999, so 26 years later, there must also be an eastward shift in NATO's infrastructure. To me, this is a no-brainer.", the Polish president said in an interview with the American newspaper 'Financial Times'.
“Not only do I think the time has come, but it would also be safer if those weapons were already here,” He stated that the proposal had recently been discussed with the US special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg. Duda had already raised this option in 2022 with then-US President Joe Biden.
The Polish president stressed that this decision is up to his American counterpart, Donald Trump, before recalling that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in 2023 that Moscow would deploy tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, amid the invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
"Russia had no hesitation when it decided to relocate its nuclear weapons to Belarus. It didn't ask anyone's permission," Duda said, backing the Polish prime minister's recent statements. Donald Tusk, on the possibility of obtaining protection through France's idea of extending its "nuclear umbrella" to cover its European allies.
However, he played down Tusk's own proposal for Warsaw to develop its own nuclear arsenal, stating that it would take "decades" to achieve this. He also ruled out the possibility of the United States ending its military presence in Poland, given that the country is "a credible ally" of Washington and has "strategic interests" in Polish territory.
Support for Trump's negotiating stance
On another note, Duda called for Trump to be "given a chance" to try to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table for a peace agreement, saying he doesn't believe the US president is favoring Moscow in this process.
“This isn't delicate diplomacy, it's a difficult game, but in my opinion, Trump isn't just being nice and kind to Russia.”"I think he's using tools against Russia, although they may not be as loud and visible as those he's using against Ukraine," he asserted.
"No one has managed to stop this war so far, so let's give Trump a chance," he said, while attacking the Polish foreign minister. Radoslaw sikorski, after his clash on social media with magnate Elon Musk and the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on kyiv's access to the Starlink system.
In this way, he considered that Sikorski's words were "totally unnecessary" and stated that "you don't discuss with the US Administration on Twitter - the name of the social network before Musk bought it and changed it to X -, you do it through diplomatic channels," he concluded.
The tensions stemmed from Musk's remarks on X in which he said his Starlink satellite system is "the backbone of the Ukrainian army." "Without it, the entire combat front would collapse," he proclaimed Sunday, as part of a series of pleas in favor of peace negotiations.
In response, Sikorski responded that "ethics aside, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable supplier, we will be forced to look elsewhere." Musk then called him "small-time," while Rubio pointed out that his Polish counterpart "is making things up," given that "no one is threatening to leave Ukraine without Starlink."
Tusk himself intervened hours later in the clash to emphasize that allied countries should "never" act with "arrogance" when dealing with their political allies, in a veiled allusion to the United States. "Being a true leader means respecting partners and allies. Even the smallest and weakest," he said.
(With information from Europe Press)
Source: INFOBAE and Aurora