Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has once again called on the U.S. to place nuclear weapons within its borders in a show of deterrence to Russia’s continued aggression just over the border in Ukraine.
A similar request was apparently made to the Biden administration in 2022, which was never agreed to, but Duda has not given up on the idea. This time he addressed his appeal to the Trump administration during an interview with the Financial Times that was published Thursday.
“Russia did not even hesitate when they were relocating their nuclear weapons into Belarus,” Duda told the Financial Times in reference to 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 to Fox News Digital’s questions about where President Donald Trump stands when it comes to this form of deterrence.
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The Trump administration this week took steps to try and bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, which has been raging for more than three years following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
While Ukraine has agreed to the U.S.’s initial 30-day ceasefire contingent on Russia’s acceptance of the terms, Moscow has not, and it is unlikely that the Trump administration would take steps to jeopardize those negotiations by agreeing to put U.S. nukes in Poland – which shares a border with Russia and could be viewed as a threat by the Kremlin.
But Duda’s advisor on international affairs, Wojciech Kolarski, echoed the Polish president’s plea and, in a Thursday interview with Poland’s RMF FM radio, argued that as a NATO member who shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad region, as well as Ukraine and Belarus, the steps were important for Warsaw’s security.
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But should the U.S. again refuse Poland’s request, there is another nuclear-armed nation in the NATO alliance that may be willing to assist in “nuclear sharing.”
Amid mounting concern in the European Union that the U.S. could withdraw forces from the bloc or become an unreliable defense partner in countering Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron opened discussions on a strategy that could help extend its nuclear deterrence to other EU nations.
While the specifics of that strategy remain unclear, including whether France has proposed actually dispersing nuclear arms to other nations, Poland has reportedly been in talks with France about the issue.
Russia has already called France’s strategy to re-evaluate its extension of nuclear deterrence “extremely confrontational.”
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Despite Moscow’s objections, France’s defense concept is far from new as the U.S. deterrence umbrella during the Cold War was intended to ensure NATO allies would be protected under America’s nuclear power in case of a direct threat by another nuclear-armed nation, like Russia, China or North Korea.
While France is the EU’s only nuclear power, it has the third-largest nuclear stockpile when it comes to nuclear-armed nations in NATO, which also includes the U.S. and the U.K.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
