Poland should have its own nuclear weapons programme, given the threat posed by Russia, President Karol Nawrocki has said.
Speaking to broadcaster Polsatnews on Sunday evening, Naworcki said “the path to a Polish nuclear capability – with all due respect for international regulations – is the path we should take.”
The right-wing president is commander-in-chief of the Polish army.
The Eastern European country has borders with Ukraine, which has been defending itself from a full-scale Russian invasion for nearly four years, and Moscow’s ally Belarus.
Since Poland is directly on the border of an armed conflict, the country’s security should be enhanced with a nuclear weapons programme, Nawrocki argued. He could not say when such a programme might begin.
Asked whether he feared a Russian reaction to such a move, the Polish president said: “Russia can react aggressively to anything.”
Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz reacted cautiously to the president’s proposal. According to the PAP news agency, the minister said that the issue of nuclear weapons was “the most sensitive of all sensitive topics.”
Kosiniak-Kamysz said he is in favour of creating Poland’s own research and development capabilities, but believes it would be better to take action than to talk about plans and intentions.
Poland, which is a member of both the European Union and NATO, is one of Ukraine’s closest military and political allies.
With this initiative Nawrocki is going further than his predecessor Andrzej Duda, who said in 2024 his country was ready to have US nuclear weapons stationed on its territory under NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement.
NATO said at the time that an expansion of nuclear weapons deployment was not planned.
The United States has stationed nuclear weapons in several European countries under nuclear sharing for many decades. There is no official information on the locations but the weapons are believed to be stored in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey.