WARSAW
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Friday that Poland and Germany should join forces to counter the threat posed by Russian missiles deployed in Kaliningrad.
"This is an urgent Polish-German challenge," he told the DPA, PAP and AFP news agencies in an interview.
The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad lies between Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east.
Russia has deployed Iskander-M tactical ballistic missile systems there, capable of carrying conventional and nuclear warheads. The missiles can reach Warsaw, Berlin and Copenhagen, DPA reported.
“We are good allies and we must build armed forces that will not scare anyone, but deter Putin,” he said, adding that the new German government’s rearmament plans do not raise concerns in Poland.
“As long as Germany is in NATO and the EU, I am more afraid of German hesitation in the matter of armament than of the German army,” Sikorski added.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently announced plans to build the strongest conventional army in Europe.
A change in Trump’s stance on Ukraine
Asked about the recent NATO summit, Sikorski said the meeting had been “fruitful.”
He added that he had observed “a change in the US approach to the war in Ukraine.”
“I think that President Trump understood that it is Russia that does not want to end the war, that it is Ukraine that unconditionally agreed to a ceasefire,” he said.