Washington: Vice president Kamala Harris rushed to Poland on Thursday to meet Polish President Andrzej Duda after both nations debated over handing Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to Ukraine. The US told Poland against any such action is untenable, exposing fears that Poland may come in the line of Russian fire if it takes any such action.
Duda, however, urged the US to do more to enhance the security of its Eastern European ally. “We want to boost our security also on our own here in Poland. There are already ongoing programs such as Patriot programs, such as the HIMARS program, the program of the purchase of F-35s, or the recently started program — the purchase of Abrams tanks for Poland,” Duda said and urged Harris to accelerate the process.
“Those programs should be accelerated as much as possible because we want to provide this state-of-the-art equipment to our armed forces as soon as possible,” Duda said.
The Polish president also highlighted that the NATO membership and the presence of rotational US army personnel were necessary for the safety of Poland. “I was perfectly aware of the fact that an aggressive Russia… would not stop only attacking Georgia in 2008 and attacking part of Ukraine in 2014. I knew that this appetite, this imperial appetite will grow,” Duda said.
“If the North Atlantic Alliance does not stand up, does not present a tough stance, then we will see more attacks from Russia — to which perhaps, sooner or later, also my country, Poland, would fall victim to,” he said.
Harris assured Duda by highlighting that the US sent an additional 4,700 American troops to Poland.
Harris, responding to questions from the media, reiterated that the US commitment to Article 5 of NATO states is ‘ironclad’ and said that the US is ready to defend its allies if such an event occurs. Duda also spoke about the decision to send MiG jets to Ukraine and said that it did not want to make a decision that could endanger the safety of the NATO nations.
He said that Poland did not want to be seen as a nation that exposed the NATO alliance to danger. “We have to look at these not only through our own lens — through the prism of the security of Poland — but we also have to adopt the perspective of the security of NATO as a whole. We behaved in such a way as a reliable member of NATO should behave — a member of NATO who does not want to expose NATO to any difficult situation,” Duda said.
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