Poland calls on US to place nukes within its borders amid Russia threat

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Russia is not indicating it’s ready for a ceasefire with Ukraine, expert says

Hudson Institute senior fellow and foreign policy expert Rebeccah Heinrichs warned the ball is ‘in Russia’s court’ for ceasefire talks with Ukraine and discussed the significance of Iran, China and Russia meeting for nuclear talks. 

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has once again called on the U.S. to place nuclear weapons within its borders in a show of deterrence to Russia’s continued aggression just over the border in Ukraine.

A similar request was apparently made to the Biden administration in 2022, which was never agreed to, but Duda has not given up on the idea. This time he addressed his appeal to the Trump administration during an interview with the Financial Times that was published Thursday.

“Russia did not even hesitate when they were relocating their nuclear weapons into Belarus,” Duda told the Financial Times in reference to actions Russia took beginning in 2023, a year after it invaded Ukraine. “They didn’t ask anyone’s permission.”

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about where President Donald Trump stands when it comes to this form of deterrence.

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President Andrzej Duda speaks during the Polish parliament meeting in Warsaw on March 7, 2025. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Trump administration this week took steps to try and bring about an end to the war in Ukraine, which has been raging for more than three years following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. 

While Ukraine has agreed to the U.S.’s initial 30-day ceasefire contingent on Russia’s acceptance of the terms, Moscow has not, and it is unlikely that the Trump administration would take steps to jeopardize those negotiations by agreeing to put U.S. nukes in Poland – which shares a border with Russia and could be viewed as a threat by the Kremlin.

But Duda’s advisor on international affairs, Wojciech Kolarski, echoed the Polish president’s plea and, in a Thursday interview with Poland’s RMF FM radio, argued that as a NATO member who shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad region, as well as Ukraine and Belarus, the steps were important for Warsaw’s security.

Aerial view taken on Nov. 17, 2022 shows the site where a missile strike killed two men in the eastern Poland village of Przewodow, near the border with war-ravaged Ukraine on Nov. 15, 2022. (Wojtek Radwanski, Damien Simonart/AFP via Getty Images)

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But should the U.S. again refuse Poland’s request, there is another nuclear-armed nation in the NATO alliance that may be willing to assist in “nuclear sharing.”

Amid mounting concern in the European Union that the U.S. could withdraw forces from the bloc or become an unreliable defense partner in countering Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron opened discussions on a strategy that could help extend its nuclear deterrence to other EU nations.

French President Emmanuel Macron meets with President Donald Trump. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

While the specifics of that strategy remain unclear, including whether France has proposed actually dispersing nuclear arms to other nations, Poland has reportedly been in talks with France about the issue.

Russia has already called France’s strategy to re-evaluate its extension of nuclear deterrence “extremely confrontational.”

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Despite Moscow’s objections, France’s defense concept is far from new as the U.S. deterrence umbrella during the Cold War was intended to ensure NATO allies would be protected under America’s nuclear power in case of a direct threat by another nuclear-armed nation, like Russia, China or North Korea.

While France is the EU’s only nuclear power, it has the third-largest nuclear stockpile when it comes to nuclear-armed nations in NATO, which also includes the U.S. and the U.K. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.   

Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.