Trump Says He’s Open To More US Troops In Poland And Russia Penalties
Trump added that he would maintain — and be willing to expand — the US troop presence in Poland, a longtime irritant to the Kremlin.
Photographer: Omar Marques/Getty Images
US President Donald Trump said the US could increase its troop presence in Poland and indicated more financial penalties targeting Moscow could be implemented in the coming days as he prepared to speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European leaders.
Those so-called “coalition of the willing” talks, scheduled for Thursday, are expected to include a discusssion of a security backstop for Ukraine. Preperation for the meeting comes as Trump’s self-imposed deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold a bilateral meeting with Zelenskiy nears, and as the US president met with Polish President Karol Nawrocki at the White House on Wednesday.
During the exchange, Trump bristled at questions about why he had not yet moved forward with additional sanctions or tariffs targeting Russia, noting he had already ratcheted up tariffs on India over its purchase of Russian oil.
“Would you say that was no action?” Trump said. “You call that no action, and I haven’t done phase two yet or phase three.”
“He knows where I stand, and he’ll make a decision one way or the other,” Trump added later about Putin. “Whatever his decision is, we’ll either be happy about it or unhappy and if we’re unhappy about it, you’ll see things happen.”
The president added that he would “know pretty much what we’re going to be doing” after the call. Trump added that he would maintain — and be willing to expand — the US troop presence in Poland, a longtime irritant to the Kremlin.
“We’ll put more there, if they want,” he said Wednesday, adding that “we are very much aligned with Poland.”
Trump said that while the US may shift troops from other countries he had not thought about pulling them from Poland, casting the relationship between the two countries as “very special.”
“We never even thought in terms of removing soldiers from Poland,” Trump said. “We do think about it with regard to other countries, but we would never know where. We’re with Poland all the way, and we will help Poland protect itself.”
Putin earlier Wednesday said he had never refused to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, claiming that Zelenskiy was welcome to come to Moscow.
Nawrocki, a populist leader who won the support of the US president’s Make America Great Again allies, is making his first foreign trip as head of state after taking office in early August. Nawrocki is a staunch critic of the European Union and believes Poland’s security and future rest exclusively in stronger ties with Trump’s America, in contrast to the pro-European stance of Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Trump has also sought to cultivate right-wing populist leaders in Europe, including Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban.
Nawrocki and Trump are expected to discuss security and energy issues in addition to the Ukraine, according to the Polish president’s aides. Trump said the two sides would also discuss trade.
“I think that we have so strong relations that we have never had,” Nawrocki said. “With American soldiers on Polish soil, we solidify and we are secure,” he added.
The relationship with the US is a crucial issue for Poland, a nation on NATO’s eastern flank which borders Russia and has strongly supported Ukraine. It’s also played a major role in the tense power struggle in Warsaw between the president and prime minister, with Nawrocki brandishing his good rapport with Trump’s White House, whose officials endorsed his election campaign.
Those tensions spilled over into arrangements for the meeting. In a memo that was leaked last week, Poland’s Foreign Ministry urged Nawrocki to be cautious when discussing a weapons purchases, a digital services tax and nuclear energy cooperation with Trump.
Instead of joining Nawrocki in his Trump meeting, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski held parallel talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Miami on Tuesday.
Warsaw and Washington have been strong allies over the past decade, with Trump visiting Poland early in his first term and initially fostering cozy relations with Nawrocki’s predecessor, Andrzej Duda.
Relations strengthened following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. About 10,000 US troops are currently based in Poland, and Nawrocki is expected to seek Trump’s commitment to keep them there amid fears that the may seek to scale down the US military’s overseas presence.
