By Andrea Shalal and Anna Koper
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump will welcome Polish President Karol Nawrocki back to the White House on Wednesday after backing the conservative nationalist in Polish elections, with their meeting likely to focus on Russia’s war in Ukraine and energy security.
Trump extended the invitation days after Nawrocki was swornin early in August and then intervened to ensure he joined a key telephone call on Ukraine with European leaders instead of his rival, centrist Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The president hosted Nawrocki at the White House in May, backing him at a crucial moment in the Polish election. Nawrocki went on to defeat the candidate of Tusk’s pro-European, centrist party a month later.
Wednesday’s talks are expected to center on stalled negotiations to end the war and Poland’s security concerns, amid signs that Trump has grown frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin for failing to move forward on ending the war.
On Tuesday, Trump said he was “very disappointed” in Putin, adding that his administration planned some action to bring down deaths in the war.
He will greet Nawrocki at the White House at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) with the two leaders to meet first in the Oval Office before a private lunch, the White House said. Poland, a member of NATO, borders both Russia and war-torn Ukraine.
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Nawrocki would urge Trump to stand firm against Putin and refrain from reducing U.S. troops in Poland.
“From the Polish side, it’s clear what the message will be, and that is, ‘Don’t get played by Putin, stand up to him and we need a united transatlantic position if we’re going to get an end to the war in Russia,'” Kupchan said.
Nawrocki was also expected to push for an increased U.S. commitment to Polish security and more troops but that could be a tough sell at a time when the U.S. military’s force structure review was likely to recommend fewer troops in Europe, he added.
The U.S. military presence on NATO’s eastern flank, including Poland, remains one of the key issues for Warsaw, which is seeking assurances of continued support.
“The success of his (Nawrocki’s) special relationship with the MAGA movement and with President Trump would be if the United States increased its presence in Poland,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told journalists on Tuesday.
Trump has long been supportive of Poland, lauding its leadership in boosting military spending and acknowledging its geographic position in “a tough neighborhood.”
But experts say he will be looking for Warsaw to buy even more U.S. weapons for its own use and to send to Ukraine.
Poland is a big buyer of U.S. arms, such as M1A2 Abrams tanks, F-35 fighter jets, AH-64 Apache helicopters, Javelin missiles and HIMARS rocket launchers. In June, Washington said it would give Poland a $4-billion loan guarantee to buy more.
“Trump is, broadly speaking, much more transactional than ideological, even though he will show some affinity for the politics of a right-wing Polish president,” Kupchan said.
Increased arms purchases and potential joint ventures to expand Ukraine’s defense industrial base offered a “sweet spot,” he added.
The meeting also offers a chance for the U.S. to renew its engagement in the Three Seas Initiative (3SI), launched in 2015 to boost energy, transport and digital infrastructure between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas.
Trump attended its second summit in Warsaw in 2017.
The former U.S. ambassador to Poland, Paul Jones, said in an essay published by the German Marshall Fund this week that U.S. participation in 3SI could bring more U.S. energy and technology sales in the region, a goal of Trump’s America First policy.
A strong partnership between the U.S. and the 3SI countries was also likely to curb China’s influence there, he said.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Washington and Anna Koper in Warsaw; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
