One of Ukraine’s allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has dismissed the possibility of sending its own troops to assist in the war with Russia.
The comments were made on Monday by Jacek Siewiera, head of Poland’s National Security Bureau to TVN24, as reported by Russian state-owned news agency Tass.
“At this time, any involvement of Polish troops in Ukraine should be ruled out,” Siewiera said.
He added that, even if Kyiv mobilized additional soldiers, the territories so far captured by Russia would be difficult to reclaim. “There would still be too little manpower to recapture, as part of a counteroffensive, the territories that have been taken,” he said.
Poland, which borders Ukraine and the Russian exclave Kaliningrad, has been a steadfast supporter of the former’s resistance efforts from the outset of the conflict, donating around 0.7 percent of its GDP to Kyiv since the invasion was launched in February 2022, according to the Kiel Institute’s Support Tracker.
When contacted by Newsweek, a spokesperson for the Polish National Security Bureau said: “There is currently no consideration in Poland of any military involvement as part of stabilization forces in Ukraine.” They clarified that Siewiera’s second comments—on the futility of further mobilization efforts by Kyiv—concerned domestic initiatives by Ukraine and not the involvement of foreign forces.
Michael Kappeler/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Some officials from Poland and Ukraine have grown more skeptical about Ukraine’s chances in the war with Russia. Kyiv’s foreign minister recently said in an interview with the Financial Times that the country is heading toward defeat.
“Do we today have the means and tools to turn the tables and change the trajectory of how things are happening? No, we don’t,” Dmytro Kuleba said. “And if it continues like this, we will lose the war.”
A day prior, Siewiera was quoted by Tass as saying: “The Russian side unquestionably holds both the initiative and the advantage on the battlefield,” and that, “if we measure the war solely by the area of land occupied, Russia is undoubtedly winning this war.”
In an effort to strengthen Kyiv’s forces, Poland has previously floated sending its own troops to Ukraine. Earlier this year. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that the country “should not rule out any option,” when asked by Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcz. “Let Putin guess what we will do,” he added.
His comments echoed those of French President Emmanuel Macron, who in February said that dispatching Western troops to Ukraine could not be “ruled out,” as reported by The Associated Press.
Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations previously told Newsweek that creating a coalition of states willing to deploy their own troops in the conflict “is the only possibility to give Ukraine security guarantees which will make a ceasefire eventually possible and acceptable for Ukraine.”
More recently, however, Polish officials have reversed their support for this proposal. In late November, Siewiera told Radio ZET that sending Polish soldiers to fight in Ukraine “is not the right solution,” adding that the country currently needs military support and “a proper diagnosis of the economic conditions for waging war.”
“In the current circumstances there are no plans to send Polish troops to Ukraine,” the Polish Foreign Ministry told Newsweek. “There is no change in the position of the Polish authorities on that point.”
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Update 12/10/24, 9:45 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include a response from the Polish National Security Bureau.
Update 12/11/24, 10:33 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include a response from the Polish Foreign Ministry.
