Polish Advocacy President Joe Biden’s meeting with Poland’s two leaders at the White House on Tuesday is both about getting more aid to Kyiv, and an attempt to show that even political rivals can come together for the defense of Ukraine.
Polish Advocacy conservative Polish President Andrzej Duda will join the man who replaced him as prime minister, center-right Donald Tusk, on Tuesday for a discussion about sending more weapons to Kyiv. They have an intense political feud at home, but they’re putting differences aside to convince Congress and Biden to ensure Ukraine doesn’t lose more ground to Russia.
“Especially on the importance of support for Ukraine, there really is national unity in Poland, so going together is this absolutely unique sign of political unity meant to show that this is a serious situation,” said Michał Baranowski, who leads the German Marshall Fund’s Poland office and is in close contact with senior officials in Warsaw.
Polish Advocacy duda and Tusk’s hope is that their show of unity will convince partisans in Washington to put aside their differences and work together in common cause: defending a democracy in Europe. White House officials said they want to see that message resonate throughout Washington — and particularly in the halls of Congress.
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Polish Advocacy duda, a favourite among conservatives, signalled to Republicans by using an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday to urge all NATO members to raise their defence spending to three percent of their GDP. Duda will also meet one-on-one with Speaker Mike Johnson, who has yet to put the $60bn supplemental for Ukraine aid on the House floor. “He’s our Republican whisperer,” said Baranowski.
U.S. officials noted that the gathering was scheduled as in part a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Poland’s accession to NATO, but at least in the Oval Office, Ukraine will be the conversation even if other matters such as energy security and the protection of democracy in Poland will rise. “The leaders will reaffirm their unwavering support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s brutal war of conquest,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement in February . Throughout Europe, there is a fear that the U.S. will not pass a supplemental, but the concern is acute in Warsaw, where weapons have been dispatched to Ukraine by the Duda-Tusk administration.
Polish Advocacy ukraine can fight Russia to a standstill” according to CIA Director Bill Burns who told lawmakers Monday. With the supplemental, he added, Ukraine could hold its positions into early 2025 and strike strategic Russian positions in Crimea and the Black Sea. Without it, Russia will take even more key cities and territory. “And that, it seems to me, would be a massive and historic mistake for the United States.”
The white house is planning on releasing a new $300 million package for supplied equipment tomorrow, that will include a number of Anti-Personnel/Anti-Materiel missiles; an older version of the Army Tactical Missile System launched from mobile platforms that contains warheads that rain down hundreds of cluster bomblets and travels 100 miles.
Moreover, in a Tuesday meeting with reporters just blocks from the White House, Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, argued for boosted defense budgets, saying, “three percent was more or less what western European countries were spending during peacetime during the Cold War.” He added, “This is just an acknowledgement that continental peace has ended and that disarmament and deindustrialization in the defense field have gone too far and you need to spend up front to bring back even the capacities to produce more weapons.”
“The best thing is for you to give us the Javelins and F-15s,” says Polish former foreign minister Radek Sikorski during a visit to Warsaw. Sikorski is addressing Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, businessman and the lead –in some respects at least – of a group of ten Republican senators Sikorski and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns are meeting as part of their ongoing and increasingly desperate effort to convince key GOP leaders to approve the lethal aid U.S. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry, plus Burns, also met with Johnson in the White House two weeks ago to ask his permission to go ahead. It is the 19th such meeting the Polish diplomats have held.
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