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Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk attends a European Union leaders special summit to discuss Ukraine and European defense in Brussels, Belgium, on March 6, 2025.
Might Poland go nuclear?
As Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was in Saudi Arabia Monday ahead ofUS-Ukrainian talks, his military launched its largest drone attack on Moscow overnight, killing two people. And if you ask Elon Musk, he was also busy attacking X. On Monday, Musk claimed without evidence that his social media platform went dark yesterday because it was targeted by a “massive cyberattack” traced to “the Ukraine area.”
Meanwhile, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has made waves in recent days.
When Poland joined NATO in 1999, it appeared the country could count on the most successful military alliance in history to protect its borders against future threats. At the time, an American renunciation of NATO was hard to imagine.
On Friday, Tusk warned his country that a “profound change of American geopolitics” forces his government to prepare to double the size of its military and to “reach for opportunities related to nuclear weapons.” In the past, Poland’s leaders have suggested hosting the nuclear weapons of others, but the hint that Poland might develop its own arsenal in response to potential Russian aggression and a feared US retreat from Europe is something new.
Tusk’s jarring comments reflect a spiral in relations between Tusk’s government and the Donald Trump administration. A series ofaccusations and insults flew over the weekend between Poland’s foreign minister, Trump adviser Elon Musk, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the Musk-owned Starlink satellite system that supports Ukraine’s forces on the battlefield.
The PM’s suggestion that Poland might look to nuclear weapons in part reflects political worries. Poland will hold a first round ofpresidential elections in May, and Poles look likely to back a leader they believe can stand up to both Trump and Vladimir Putin.
But acquiring nuclear weapons would be time-consuming, politically fraught, and enormously expensive for Poland.
The Civic Coalition's leader Donald Tusk speaks during the election night in Warsaw.
Poles push populists out at polls
Exit polls from Sunday’s Polish national election show the ruling Law and Justice party, or PiS, failing to secure enough support to form a third majority government.
While it won the most seats, opposition leader Donald Tusk is claiming victory as his Civic Coalition looks to build a government with the Third Way and the Left, who scored a combined 248 seats, surpassing the 231 needed for a majority. The Third Way performed better than expected with 13% of the vote, while the far-right Confederation party, on whose support PiS depended, got only 6.2%, which the party called a defeat.
Turnout was the highest since 1989 when voters turfed the ruling communist party. Some 73% of Poles voted, compared to the expected 55-60%, suggesting that the liberal opposition mobilized enough voters in the last two weeks of the campaign to turn the tide in its favor.
“The outcome is good news for Poland’s domestic political and economic trajectory as well as its position in the EU,” says Eurasia Group expert Anna-Carina Hamker. “The incoming liberal opposition government will take steps to restore the rule of law and depoliticize state institutions while adopting a more consensus-oriented approach towards Brussels and other European capitals.”