Poland’s president on Monday referred to as on different members of the NATO alliance to lift their spending on defence to a few per cent of their gross home product as Russia places its economic system on a warfare footing and pushes ahead with its invasion of Ukraine.
President Andrzej Duda made his name in remarks directed at residence and overseas. His enchantment got here on the eve of a go to to the White House, the place U.S. President Joe Biden will obtain each Duda and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday.
“In the face of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s growing imperial aspirations, the countries making up NATO must act boldly and uncompromisingly,” Duda mentioned in a Monday night tackle to his nation.
His enchantment comes at Poland marks the twenty fifth anniversary of its accession to NATO, together with the Czech Republic and Hungary, on March 12, 1999.
“Poland is proud to have been a part of it for 25 years,” he mentioned. “There has been and there is no better guarantor of security than the North Atlantic Alliance.”
“The war in Ukraine has clearly shown that the United States is and should remain the leader in security issues in Europe and the world,” Duda mentioned in his speech to his nation. “However, other NATO countries must also take greater responsibility for the security of the entire alliance and intensively modernize and strengthen their troops.”
Duda’s remarks got here on the identical day that Sweden’s flag was raised at NATO headquarters in Brussels to cement its place because the thirty second member of the trans-Atlantic alliance. Finland joined NATO final yr.
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“Today, NATO is sending a clear and strong signal by welcoming Finland and Sweden into its ranks,” he mentioned. “This is a historic event. Countries that have so far maintained a neutral status for years are joining the alliance. NATO is therefore significantly strengthened. However, further bold decisions are needed.”
NATO members agreed in 2014 to spice up their defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, however most members, together with Germany, nonetheless fall in need of that benchmark.
Poland, nevertheless, now spends 4 per cent of its GDP on defence, making it the member to spend probably the most in share phrases because it modernizes its army, whereas the U.S. is properly above three per cent.
“Russia’s imperialistic ambitions and aggressive revisionism are pushing Moscow toward a direct confrontation with NATO, with the West and, ultimately, with the whole free world,” Duda mentioned in an op-ed printed in The Washington Post.
Duda mentioned that places the United States and Poland ready to “lead by example and provide an inspiration for others.”
“The Russian Federation has switched its economy to war mode. It is allocating close to 30 percent of its annual budget to arm itself,” Duda argued within the newspaper op-ed. “This figure and other data coming out of Russia are alarming. Vladimir Putin’s regime poses the biggest threat to global peace since the end of the Cold War.”
The Biden administration urged Duda’s name to lift the defence spending goal for NATO nations could also be, at the very least for now, overly bold.
”I feel step one is to get each nation assembly the 2 per cent threshold, and we’ve seen enchancment of that,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller mentioned. “But I think that’s the first step before we start talking about an additional proposal.”
Duda will go to Brussels for a gathering with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg after his go to to the U.S.
—Aamer Madhani contributed to this report from Washington.
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