NATO: Poland says it is ready to deploy nuclear weapons, Moscow threatens “retaliatory measures”

Nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe soon? Poland is ready to welcome nuclear weapons on its territory if NATO, of which it is a member, decides to strengthen its eastern flank in the face of Russia’s deployment of new weapons in neighboring Kaliningrad and Belarus, the Polish president said in an interview published Monday. Russia’s reaction was not long in coming: a few hours later the Kremlin promised to “guarantee” its security if this scenario was confirmed.

“If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of the joint use of nuclear weapons on our territory in order to strengthen the security of NATO’s eastern flank, we are ready to do so,” Andrzej Duda explained to the popular newspaper Fakt. “We are an ally of the North Atlantic Alliance, and we have obligations in this area,” he insisted.

The track has been discussed “for some time”

The Polish head of state added that the issue of the potential deployment of nuclear weapons in Poland had been the subject of discussions between Poland and the United States “for some time.” He is currently in Canada after visiting the United States, where he met with former President Donald Trump and visited the UN. “I have already raised this topic several times,” he added. Andrzej Duda met with his American counterpart Joe Biden in March.

According to the Polish leader, “Russia is increasingly militarizing the Kaliningrad enclave. It is in the process of transferring its nuclear weapons to “Belarus,” two territories bordering Poland. In June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had transferred the first nuclear weapons to Belarus.

In response, the Kremlin said on Monday that Russia would take measures to “guarantee” its security if Poland deployed nuclear weapons on its territory. “The military, of course, will analyze the situation and in any case will take all necessary response measures to guarantee our safety,” Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told the press.

In turn, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov assessed that “the West is on the edge of a dangerous abyss of direct military confrontation between nuclear powers, which could have catastrophic consequences,” the TASS agency quotes. Without referring to the Polish declarations, he assured that the United States and NATO countries “still dream of striking.” strategic defeat to Russia and are ready to continue the policy of containment towards our country until the last Ukrainian “.

At the Vilnius Summit in 2023, Allies reaffirmed that NATO will do “whatever is necessary to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of its nuclear deterrent mission, including continuing to modernize its nuclear capabilities and update its planning process.”

At the end of March, the head of Polish diplomacy also confirmed that the alliance was studying the possibility of shooting down Russian missiles too close to the borders of its eastern flank after Warsaw reported a violation of its airspace. “But this could only be done with the consent of the Ukrainian side and taking into account the international consequences,” he clarified, however.