Photo: Collected
Poland's proposal to ramp up NATO countries' defense spending from the current 2% of GDP to 3% has been received "calmly" by US authorities, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday (13 March).
On Tuesday, Duda visited the US Senate and the House of Representatives, where he spoke about bolstering security in Central and Eastern Europe and suggested increasing the defense spending for NATO members, which was welcomed by both chambers of the US Congress, he said in an interview with the Polsat broadcaster.
"We also discussed this during a meeting with [US] President [Joe] Biden. It [the proposal to increase defense spending to 3%] was received calmly. I have a very simple argumentation: today we have to actualize a lot of commitments that have also been made in NATO," Duda said.
The president added that he was talking about putting into practice the decisions made at the NATO Summit in Vilnius in July 2023, where NATO leaders agreed on a package of three elements to bring Ukraine closer to the alliance, including a program for transition to NATO standards, the establishment of a NATO-Ukraine Council and expediting Kiev's accession process. So far, however, the bloc has not extended an official invitation to Kiev.
NATO members recognize that they do not have enough weapons to support Ukraine, the president said, adding that "spending is needed," which means that Europe "needs to spend much more on defense than it has done so far."
Western countries, including member states of the European Union, have been providing military and financial aid to Kiev since the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that NATO expansion to include Ukraine creates a direct national security threat to Russia and that Moscow considers the non-aligned status of Ukraine to be extremely important.
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