{"id":7860,"date":"2026-05-20T16:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T16:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/7860\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T16:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T16:46:16","slug":"polish-officials-relieved-as-us-troop-decision-deemed-temporary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/7860\/","title":{"rendered":"Polish officials relieved as US troop decision deemed temporary"},"content":{"rendered":"

WARSAW, Poland (AP) \u2014 Polish officials on Wednesday welcomed U.S. statements clarifying<\/a> that the decision not to deploy 4,000 U.S. troops to the central European country was a temporary measure.<\/p>\n

The Polish government last week reacted with disbelief at news<\/a> that 4,000 troops from the Army\u2019s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division were no longer en route as planned to the country that borders Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration previously said it was cutting U.S. forces in Germany<\/a>, a decision sparking unease and criticism in both Europe and Washington.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, the chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called it a \u201ctemporary delay\u201d of the deployment of U.S. forces to Poland, which he described as a \u201cmodel U.S. ally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poland spends the most in the NATO military alliance on defense as a proportion of its economy, around 4.7% in 2025.<\/p>\n

Parnell called the delay a result of the U.S. reducing the number of brigade combat teams assigned to Europe from four to three, and indicated the Pentagon needed to decide which troops to station where.<\/p>\n

Also speaking on Tuesday night, Vice President JD Vance disputed that the U.S. was reducing troop levels in Poland: \u201cThat\u2019s not a reduction. That\u2019s just a standard delay in rotation that sometimes happens in these situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday said he was happy to hear \u201cWashington\u2019s declaration that Poland will be treated as it deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polish Defense Minister W\u0142adys\u0142aw Kosiniak-Kamysz, who spoke with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday night, said the new U.S. statements mean that the \u201cU.S. presence is maintained.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cSometimes a rotating model can change into a permanent model and this is always much better.\u201d Around 10,000 U.S. troops are typically stationed in Poland, the majority of them present on a rotational basis.<\/p>\n

Polish officials said they were told they would be involved in discussions about the reorganization of U.S. troops in Europe.<\/p>\n

The U.S. did not say how long the delay would last. The Polish defense minister said he was hoping for clarification on troop presence in the following weeks.<\/p>\n

But Tusk said Europeans should be under no illusion about Washington\u2019s determination to reduce its military presence on the continent and the need for Europeans to fill the gap.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said U.S. allies have known for a year that the Trump administration would be withdrawing some troops from Europe and it expects, \u201crightly, for Europe and Canada to take a bigger responsibility for the conventional defense of NATO and particularly, of course, the European part of NATO.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rutte said the U.S. \u201cwill stay involved\u201d but over time could pivot resources elsewhere in the world.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has warned that Europe would have to look after its own security<\/a>, including Ukraine\u2019s, in the future.<\/p>\n

Trump and the Pentagon have said they were drawing down at least 5,000 troops in Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz<\/a> said the U.S. was being \u201chumiliated\u201d by Iran\u2019s leadership and criticized what he called a lack of strategy in the war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WARSAW, Poland (AP) \u2014 Polish officials on Wednesday welcomed U.S. statements clarifying that the decision not to deploy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6585,451,64,74,943,329,519,679,940,478,323,3901,5345,9,479,122,6541,5879,423,5878,331],"class_list":["post-7860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-donald-tusk","tag-europe","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-general-news","tag-iran-war","tag-jd-vance","tag-mark-rutte","tag-military-and-defense","tag-nato","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-poland","tag-poland-government","tag-politics","tag-sean-parnell","tag-u-s-department-of-defense","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}