Warsaw (dpa-AFX)-US defense minister Pete Hegseth praised Poland as an exemplary ally. The country not only invests in its own defense, but in that of the entire continent, said Hegseth in Warsaw after a meeting with his Polish counterpart Vladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. Negotiations are important, but ultimately meals and ammunition, tanks and helicopters as well as “hard power” would still count, says Hegseth.
The EU and NATO-Land Poland, the Belarus allied on Russia, the attacked Ukraine and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, feels threatened and upgraded by Moscow. According to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Poland already spent around five percent of his gross domestic product for defense. According to figures from last year, Germany is just above the NATO target of at least two percent.
Before visiting Warsaw, Hegseth caused a sensation with hard announcements on Ukraine. “The United States does not believe that NATO membership of Ukraine is a realistic result of a negotiating solution,” he said there. The return to the Ukrainian borders before 2014 is also unrealistic.
In Warsaw, he alternately answered the question of how to restore the Ukrainian borders from the time before the beginning of the Russian war of aggression on February 24, 2022. “It remains to be seen what these limits will look like,” he said, referring to the negotiations for the end of the war./Dhe/dp/jha