Poland must have its own nuclear weapons program, given the threat that Russia poses to the country, Polish President Karol Nawrocki said, quoted by DPA, BTA reported.
Nawrocki said yesterday in an interview with “Polsatnews“ that “the path to Polish nuclear capabilities – with all due respect to international regulations – is a path we must take“.
The right-wing president is also the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. The Eastern European country borders Ukraine, which has been defending itself since a full-scale Russian invasion almost four years ago, as well as Belarus, which maintains friendly relations with Russia.
Because Poland directly borders an armed conflict, the country's security must be strengthened with a nuclear weapons program, Nawrocki said. He could not say when such a program might begin.
In response to a question about whether he feared a Russian reaction to such a move, the Polish president said: “Russia can react aggressively to anything“.
Poland, which is a member of both the EU and NATO, is one of Ukraine's closest allies in military and political terms.
With this initiative, Nawrocki goes further than his predecessor Andrzej Duda, who stated in 2024 that the country was ready to have American nuclear weapons deployed there under NATO's so-called nuclear sharing initiative, if necessary.
NATO said at the time that there were no plans to expand the deployment of nuclear weapons.
The United States has been deploying nuclear weapons in several European countries under the nuclear sharing initiative for decades. There is no official information about their location, but the weapons are believed to be located in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey.