Poland is ready to welcome nuclear weapons on its territory if NATO, of which it is a member, decides to strengthen its eastern flank in the face of Russia’s deployment of new weapons in Kaliningrad and Belarus, the Polish president declared in an interview published Monday April 22.
“If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons within the framework of nuclear sharing on our territory in order to strengthen the security of the eastern flank of NATO, we are ready to do so,” Andrzej Duda explained to the popular daily Fact.
Discussions with the United States
The Polish head of state, who is currently in Canada after a visit to the United States where he met former President Donald Trump and visited the UN, added that the question of a Potential deployment of nuclear weapons in Poland had been the subject of discussions between Poland and the United States “for some time”.
“I’ve touched on this topic many times before,” he said. Andrzej Duda met his American counterpart Joe Biden in March. According to Andrzej Duda, “Russia is increasingly militarizing the Kaliningrad enclave. It is transferring its nuclear weapons to Belarus”, two territories which border Poland.
In June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had transferred the first nuclear weapons to Belarus. At the Vilnius Summit in 2023, Allies reaffirmed that NATO would do “whatever is necessary to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of its nuclear deterrent mission, including continuing to modernize its nuclear capabilities and update its planning process.