Polish President Karol Nawrocki said Wednesday that Poland is ready to host American troops withdrawn from Germany and that he would personally lobby Donald Trump to send them east.
The offer comes as the Pentagon prepares to pull around 5,000 troops from Germany over the next year, with Trump suggesting the cuts could go even further.
“If President Donald Trump decides to reduce the American military presence in Germany, then we in Poland are ready to receive American soldiers,” Nawrocki said during NATO exercises in Lithuania. He added that Poland already has “the infrastructure ready” for such a move.
Nawrocki’s remarks come days after Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned Monday that Poland should not “poach” troops from allies. Tusk also said Poland would take “any opportunity” to increase the U.S. presence on its territory, but that he would not allow the country to be used to break European unity.
Tusk’s “poach” comment drew sharp criticism from the opposition Law and Justice party, Nawrocki’s political camp, which accused him of prioritizing Berlin over Polish security. Tusk and Nawrocki are at loggerheads on several issues.
Talks between Warsaw and Washington over expanding the U.S. military presence in Poland are already underway “at both the military and diplomatic levels,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki told Polsat News earlier Wednesday. He added that Poland would not object if troops leaving Germany ended up there, though the government did not want them pulled from Germany in the first place.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told a defense conference in Warsaw that additional U.S. forces “will be welcome in Poland” regardless of where they are redeployed from.
Poland currently hosts around 10,000 U.S. troops. Germany has roughly 36,000.