Donald Trump is not considering reducing US military presence in NATO-ally Poland, Polish President Andrzej Duda said after the two leaders held talks in Washington DC on Saturday.
US president and Duda met for 10 minutes on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference amid intensifying discussions over the future of the war in Ukraine.
The White House is pursuing both a deal with Ukraine to ensure access to the country's minerals and a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Duda, who has had warm relations with Trump over the years, is the first European leader to meet in-person with Trump since his second inauguration last month. Poland has ramped up its military spending to more than 4% of gross domestic product, the most among Washington's allies in Europe, since Russia's full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine three years ago.
“For me the message is clear: there is no concern that the US presence in Poland will decrease,” Duda told reporters in the US capital after the meeting. “We should rather expect ties to tighten as we're a credible NATO ally. Poland's security is a fundamental issue in which the US is invested.”
Duda said Trump praised Poland for “defense spending and purchases in the US, which are being realized” and said that both military and economic ties between the two countries are getting stronger.
The Polish president, who also has strong ties with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Friday that he had urged Zelenskiy to “remain committed to the course of calm and constructive cooperation” with Trump, even as the US and Ukraine leaders traded barbs.
Trump, angered that Ukraine did not immediately accept his proposal for a minerals deal, repeated the false claim that Ukraine started the war with Russia and misrepresented Zelenskiy's approval ratings.
That prompted Zelenskiy to say the US president existed in a “disinformation space,” earning him another rebuke from Trump, who labeled the Ukrainian leader a “dictator” and called for new elections in Ukraine.
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Trump's rhetoric, which echoed talking points from the Kremlin, left many international allies rattled at a moment of uncertainty about what kind of concessions to Russia the US will back in a brokered peace deal.
Duda said Trump's plan was to “push forward negotiations, because there's no other way to end the war” in Ukraine. He added that the US president's push to secure access to Ukraine's minerals would effectively mean a greater US presence in Ukraine after the fighting stops.
“Trump wants more cooperation and he'll negotiate this with Zelenskiy, so everything is still on the table,” Duda said.
It was the leaders' first meeting since Trump hosted Duda at Trump Tower in April in New York, when Trump was attending his criminal trial that saw him convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Duda also said that Trump planned to visit Poland within months, either for a Three Seas initiative meeting in the east European nation or as part of a trip for an upcoming NATO summit due to be held in the Hague.
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