NATO has no intention of placing nuclear weapons in Poland. This was stated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during his visit to Warsaw in the company of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “There are no plans to expand the current nuclear sharing agreement,” Stoltenberg said during a joint appearance with Sunak before British soldiers stationed in Poland.
Stoltenberg’s words close, at least for now, the case opened by the statements of the Polish president Andrzej Duda. “If our allies decide to place nuclear weapons on our territory as part of nuclear sharing to strengthen the security of NATO’s eastern flank, we are ready to do so,” the president said in an interview with the Polish newspaper ‘Fakt’. Both Duda and his security advisor had already expressed similar considerations in the past. Poland, an EU and NATO country, is one of the closest military allies of Ukraine, which is being attacked by Russia. The possibility of deploying nuclear weapons in Poland has further raised tensions between the West and Russia.
London increases defense spending
Stoltenberg’s slowdown, in a certain sense, is compensated by the British acceleration announced by Sunak. The prime minister has record increase in defense budget made officialto 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030, from 2.32 now, with spending that will be put, as Downing Street sources explain, “on a war footing”, one of the three defense priorities.
“We find ourselves in the most dangerous world since the end of the Cold War and at a security turning point in Europe,” Sunak said in Poland. The budget will then gradually increase to £87 billion within six years, in “the biggest strengthening of our national defense in a generation”: this means that over this period London will invest £75 billion more in defense than it would have done if it had remained unchanged. current.
“One of the crucial lessons of the war in Ukraine is that we need bigger reserves of ammunition and for industry to be able to replenish them more quickly,” he said, after anticipating the allocation of ten billion pounds for the next ten years, for support for this sector so that the industry has certainty of long-term financing, supported by long-term contracts, so that we can produce more, that we are ready for an increase in capacity, and for move to continuous production when necessary. With this allocation, an innovation agency will also be opened. At least five percent of defense spending will go to research and development.
