Poland wants more US troops along Russia’s borders — Analysis

A top Polish leader has called for the US to dramatically expand its troop presence in Europe, to deploy more forces along Russia’s borders and possibly to station nuclear weapons in Poland.

“Poland would be pleased if the Americans increased their presence in Europe from the current 100,000 soldiers up to 150,000 in the future due to Russia’s increasing aggressiveness,”Interview published by Welt am Sonntag on Sunday, Jaroslaw Caczynski, Deputy Prime Minster.

Kaczynski, who also heads Poland’s ruling political party, said 75,000 of Washington’s troops in Europe should be permanently stationed on NATO’s eastern flank, along borders with Russia. These deployments could match roughly the 80,000 US troops the US has had in Europe since February’s military attack on Ukraine.

Poland would also be “open”Kaczynski claimed that Germany has nuclear weapons within its borders. Welt am Sonntag complained that Germany was not being fair. “has a strong inclination toward Moscow”They must agree to pay a heavy price for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Warsaw demanded tougher sanctions to stop the conflict, which included a complete EU ban on Russian trade. It also requested that Ukraine be given MiG fighter planes last month. However, Poland also wanted to use the US as an intermediary for the aircraft transfer – an idea that Washington eventually rejected because it might provoke a wider war with Russia – possibly to avoid making itself a target for retaliation from Moscow.

Kaczynski, ironically, is calling for exactly the same kind of actions that Russia claimed would escalate security tensions following NATO’s eastward expansion after the Cold War ended in 1990. The Western military alliance added former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact members to its membership ranks, then placed strategic weapons on Russia’s doorstep.

These actions were against the principle of “indivisible security” – strengthening one side’s security at the expense of the other party, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said days before the Ukraine invasion. Adding Ukraine to NATO, as has been proposed, would leave Russia “no space for us to retreat,” he said.