Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to invade other countries after his decision to start the conflict in Ukraine, Polish President Karol Nawrocki warned Tuesday.
"We don't trust Vladimir Putin's good intentions," Nawrocki told reporters at a news conference with Finnish President Alexander Stubb in Helsinki.
Poland and Finland share a border with Russia, and both NATO members were alarmed by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“While we are of course waiting for a lasting peace, a permanent peace, which is necessary for our regions, we believe that Vladimir Putin is ready to invade other countries as well,” said Poland’s newly elected nationalist president.
“That is precisely why we are developing our armed forces, we are developing our partnership and our allied relations,” he added, without specifying any concrete measures.
He claimed that the “security architecture” of the entire region had changed and that US President Donald Trump was “the only leader of the free world” who could force Putin to negotiate.
Last week, Trump offered to send more troops to Poland as he welcomed Nawrocki to the White House with a military flyover.
Meanwhile, Stubb has spoken regularly with Trump in recent months as European powers push to end the war in Ukraine.
"We're trying to explain that Putin can't be trusted, that Putin is using his usual delaying tactics," Stubb said.
The warnings reflected, who claimed on Monday, that Putin's “imperialist plan would not end with the conquest of Ukraine”, but that it would be only the beginning.
In parallel, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Tuesday the closure of the border with Belarus in response to upcoming joint military exercises between Russia and Belarus.
Belarus, a former Soviet republic, is a key Russian ally, and Moscow used Belarusian territory to launch its offensive against Ukraine in February 2022.
The Zapad-2025 (West-2025) maneuvers are scheduled for September 12-16.
In response to the joint exercises, Polish and allied forces will conduct their own military exercises in Poland, Tusk added. Some 30,000 troops are expected to participate.
According to the Polish prime minister, the Zapad war games are designed to simulate the occupation of the “Suwalki corridor”, which runs along the border between Poland and Lithuania, flanked by Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
The corridor is often considered a “fragile point” for NATO and could be the first target of a hypothetical Russian attack.
Minsk previously stated in August that the Zapad exercises would include training with Oreshnik missiles and nuclear strikes.
kyiv and several Eastern European countries fear a possible increase in military presence in Belarus, which borders Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Lithuania closed its airspace along parts of its border with Belarus in late August after military drones violated its airspace twice the previous month and because of planned maneuvers between Russia and Belarus.
