By Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal and Anna Koper
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the U.S. could increase its troop presence in Poland and pledged to secure the country’s defense during a White House meeting with its conservative nationalist President Karol Nawrocki.
Trump, who welcomed his ally with a military flyover, said the U.S. has a “tremendous relationship” with Poland. Asked if he planned to keep American troops in Poland, Trump said yes. “We’ll put more there if they want,” he said.
The U.S. military presence on NATO’s eastern flank, including Poland, remains one of the central issues for Warsaw, which is seeking assurances of continued support in the midst of Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Nawrocki said after the meeting that the two men had discussed increasing the number of U.S. troops and that Trump had strongly guaranteed Poland’s security.
“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, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Trump extended an invitation to visit to Nawrocki days after he was sworn in early in August and then intervened to ensure he joined a telephone call about Ukraine with European leaders instead of his rival, centrist Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Trump 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.
The talks were expected to touch on stalled negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and Poland’s security concerns amid signs that Trump has grown frustrated with Putin for failing to move forward on peace efforts.
Trump said he planned to hold talks about the war in Ukraine again soon. A White House official said Trump is expected to speak with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday.
“I’ll be speaking to him over the next few days … I’m going to know exactly what’s happening,” Trump said.
On Tuesday, Trump said he was disappointed in Putin, adding that his administration planned some action to reduce deaths in the war. Poland, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, borders both Russia and war-torn Ukraine.
Asked on Wednesday if he had any words for Putin, Trump replied: “I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand.”
WELCOMED WITH A FLYOVER
Trump greeted Nawrocki at the White House with a flyover by U.S. pilots in military jets, with F-16s in a special “missing man” formation in tribute to a Polish F-16 pilot who died during a rehearsal for an airshow last week.
Nawrocki had been expected to push for an increased U.S. commitment to Polish security and more troops, though that could be a tough sell as the United States weighs cutting the number of troops it has in Europe.
In Poland, the run-up to the visit has seen open conflict between the foreign ministry and the presidential palace over preparations, and, unusually, there was no high-ranking government official in Nawrocki’s delegation.
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.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal in Washington and Anna Koper in Warsaw; Editing by Trevor Hunnicutt and Nick Zieminski)
