A survey suggests that over half the population of Poland believe the US should station nuclear weapons in the country to deter Russia from using nukes against Ukraine. Polish president Andrzej Duda has reportedly already raised the issue with Washington.
According to an IBRiS survey, commissioned by Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper, 54.1 per cent of respondents believe that Poland should participate in NATO’s “nuclear sharing” program, which allows Washington to station its nuclear arsenal in countries that do not have their own. 29.5 per cent were against joining, while others refrained from answering.
“The main problem is that we do not have nuclear weapons,” explained President Duda in an interview with Gazeta Polska last week, adding that “there is no indication that we, as Poland, will have it in our hands in the near future.”
He went on to suggest that “there is always the potential to participate in the 'Nuclear Sharing' program,” and claimed that he had “spoken to the American leaders about whether the US is considering such a possibility.” “The issue remains open,” Duda said.
The US, however, has insisted that it has no plans to move nuclear weapons to any Eastern European NATO member or any nation that joined the bloc after 1997. In response to Duda’s statement, State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel told journalists that the US considers Poland an “important NATO ally in the region” but claimed he was not even aware of the issue being raised in talks between Washington and Warsaw.
Under the scheme, US nukes are currently deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye. However, these countries only serve as hosts, while ownership remains with Washington.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow was ready to “use all means” to defend itself if its territorial integrity was under threat. Putin’s words, however, were interpreted by some in the West as a “veiled threat” to use nuclear weapons in the conflict in Ukraine.
Moscow has insisted that it wasn’t threatening anybody and reiterated that under Russia’s military doctrine, nuclear weapons may only be used if such arms or other weapons of mass destruction are used against the state, or it is faced with an existential threat from conventional arms.