Poland has made an urgent plea to the US, asking it to transfer its nuclear weapons to Polish territory to deter Russia from future aggression against Europe.
Polish President Andrzej Duda called on Donald Trump to allow the move in an interview with the Financial Times on Thursday. Duda said the US President could move American nuclear weapons kept in Western Europe or the US to Poland - adding that he had recently discussed the proposal with Trump’s Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.
“I think it’s not only that the time has come, but that it would be safer if those weapons were already here,” Duda told the publication. “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.”
“Russia didn’t even hesitate when it moved its nuclear weapons to Belarus. They didn’t ask anyone for permission,” the Polish president said. His request is likely to be seen as highly contraversial in Moscow.
It comes as Vladimir Putin appeared to foil Donald Trump’s ceasefire plans as he made a rare appearance in military garb at a Kursk region command post - a move which has been observed as a signal he aims to go on with the war. He vowed to treat hundreds of Ukrainian troops captured in Kursk region as “terrorists”, potentially jailing them for decades, and not as prisoners of war who can be exchanged.
“All people who are on the territory of the Kursk region, commit crimes here against the civilian population, oppose our Armed Forces, law enforcement agencies and special services, in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation are terrorists,” he said.
Footage shows such troops humiliated by being ordered to parrot ‘Hail to Russia’ - illegal under the rules of war. He also made clear he wanted a demilitarised zone on Ukraine’s border. Putin’s ambassador to London, Andrey Kelin, insisted that the Kremlin will approach a ceasefire - which it has previously ruled out - “with a lot of caution”.
Putin will insist on conditions as “broad and similar to the demands it had previously made to Ukraine, the US and NATO”, according to reports, but such demands have until now been seen as crippling Ukraine and being unacceptable.
