Poland declares it will not send troops to Ukraine

WARSAW

Poland will not send soldiers to Ukraine, Deputy National Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk told Polish radio TOK FM on Wednesday.

“Poland does not plan to send troops to Ukraine, this is the official position of the government. We will want to be involved in terms of logistics, training, support. We will definitely help here," Tomczyk said, adding that 95% of military aid for Ukraine "goes through Poland."

The remarks come a day after US envoy on Russia and Ukraine Keith Kellogg held talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw.

Meanwhile, US officials held talks with the Russian side on ending the war in Ukraine in Riyadh on Tuesday, without the participation of Ukrainian, EU, or UK representatives. US President Donald Trump has suggested Ukraine could have avoided war if it had made a deal earlier with Russia.

Poland, which is caught between an Atlanticist foreign policy strategy and its frontline support for Ukraine, has wavered on sending troops into its eastern neighbor.

Asked about the possible greater involvement of US soldiers in Poland, the deputy defense minister said talks on this topic "are still ahead of us. Today, however, we are talking about the large involvement of Americans in Poland. We currently have about 10,000 US soldiers. This is our iron ally not only on paper.”

Asked about Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which provides that "an attack on one or more allies will mean an attack on all members" of NATO, the deputy minister quoted lawmaker Szymon Holownia's interview earlier on Wednesday on Polish news site Wirtualna Polska. "During the visit of the US defense in Warsaw, we heard many nice and well-deserved words about Poland's efforts, but there were no words - at least I don't know anything about it - about Article 5. Recently, we have definitely heard too rarely about the guarantees resulting from Article 5, on which the meaning of NATO is based."

Poland’s National Security Council will meet on Feb. 24, the third anniversary of Russia's war on Ukraine.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hagseth recently told allies in Brussels that returning to pre-2014 Ukrainian borders was unrealistic, the US did not see NATO accepting Ukraine as part of the solution to the war and that any troops deployed in Europe should not be covered by Article 5.