NATO countries should increase their defense spending to three percent of GDP, said the Polish president this week.
Europe needs to invest more in its own defense regardless of whether the next US president is Donald Trump or not, said the Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski during his visit to Finland.
He met the President of the Republic in Helsinki on Wednesday by Alexander Stubb and Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen (collect.).
– Finland does not want to be a Russian colony again. Poland does not want to be a Russian colony again. And Ukraine has the right not to be a Russian colony. Together, we will do everything we can to prevent that from happening, Sikorski said in his speech at the beginning of the press conference.
President of Poland Andrzej Duda said this week, that NATO countries should increase their defense spending to three percent of gross national product due to the Russian threat. The current target is two percent. Only a third of the countries have reached even two percent, and at least the United States expressed its skepticism about the realism of Duda’s proposal.
In Helsinki, Sikorski said he hoped that at the Washington summit in July, more NATO countries would announce that they would achieve the two percent goal.
Poland’s defense spending is close to four percent of GDP. Finland exceeded the two percent target last year. On Wednesday, Sikorski did not directly demand that his host country increase defense spending to three percent.
– We are NATO’s peripheral countries. It is no coincidence that Russia’s neighbor spends more money on defense, he formulated.
Sikorski and Valtonen also discussed border policy. Both reminded that the countries are the target of their neighbor’s hybrid operation. In the fall, Russia started pushing migrants across the border into Finland, and Belarus has been doing the same on the Polish border since 2021.
– These people have not ended up at the border between Poland and Belarus by chance. It is a hybrid operation against the EU, which is in the hands of people [Valko-Venäjän presidentti Aljaksandr] Lukashenko and [Venäjän presidentti Vladimir] PutinSikorski said.
Sikorski represents the new Polish government that came to power last November. According to him, the new government’s border policy does not differ much from its predecessor, but a “targeted and humane response” must be found for hybrid operations.
At least 55 people have died at the border since 2021, including children pushed back to Belarus by Polish border guards, says human rights organization Human Rights Watch.