KYIV, Ukraine — Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski sat for an interview with me at Poland’s Embassy in Kyiv this week. Sikorski had arrived in Ukraine as Russia was pushing the war closer to his country.
Russia has intensified strikes on the Ukrainian side of the Polish border, increasingly targeting the railways, roads, and crossings connecting Ukraine to the rest of Europe. Last Sunday, a Russian drone struck a Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train at a station roughly 1.5 miles from Poland. A diplomatic train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, and European security officials had passed through shortly before the attack, and former CIA Director David Petraeus was still at the station aboard another train. By Friday, Polish officials said Russia had attacked four Ukrainian border crossings in a week.
But Ukraine, Sikorski argues, remains one of the most cost-effective barriers against further Russian aggression.
Under NATO’s Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, European allies finance packages of U.S.-made weapons selected according to Kyiv’s battlefield needs. But the war with Iran has further depleted U.S. stocks of Patriot air defense interceptors, which Europe cannot yet produce, and Ukraine urgently needs to protect its cities, leading to an increasing free fall of Russia’s ballistic missiles onto the country.
“Ideally, Ukraine, a victim of aggression, should be given [increased] military assistance. Every time a Ukrainian [Patriot system] shoots down a Russian ballistic missile, the algorithm of the Patriot system is improved,” he said. “It’s improving America’s future capacity to defend itself. And Ukraine is a very cost-efficient way of deterring Putin from further aggression.”
Europe’s response has grown, but Warsaw does not share France’s view that European military power should be increasingly independent of America. Referencing French President Emmanuel Macron’s “strategic autonomy” narrative, Sikorski observed, “I don’t like that term, strategic autonomy, because that suggests some kind of decoupling. I prefer the term strategic harmony, with the U.S. having global responsibilities and Europe catching up after too long a period of consuming the peace dividend.”
Sikorski’s preferred division of labor would require Europe to provide most of the conventional forces needed to defend the continent, while the United States provided the other capabilities European militaries cannot quickly reproduce. Those include the American nuclear umbrella, aerial refueling, intelligence, and targeting.
“It would be less American presence in the conventional field, but still maintaining key enablers, not just the nuclear umbrella, but also midair refueling and targeting,” Sikorski said. “Europe would provide conventional defense, the U.S. would provide what Europe doesn’t have, and together we can successfully deter.”
Poland certainly cannot be accused of freeloading in NATO. The country plans to spend about 4.8% of its gross domestic product on defense in 2026, the highest share among major NATO members. Poland has also provided immense support to Ukraine. Along with solidarity, however, Warsaw’s support rests in strategic calculation: If Ukraine falls, Poland may be next.
“The closer you are to Russia, the bigger the defense budgets,” Sikorski said when asked whether Western Europe had fundamentally changed its view of Moscow. He acknowledged that it had taken Germany time to overcome its “pacifist instincts,” but said it had since become one of Ukraine’s largest supporters. “[Russian president Vladimir] Putin makes a mistake when he attacks Germany, Britain, and others, because he proves that it’s not an East European problem,” Sikorski said. “It’s an all-of-Europe problem.”
The shared threat has not erased tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv. Relations deteriorated after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which Poland holds responsible for massacring Polish civilians during the Second World War. Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that allowing the historical dispute to divide two countries threatened by Russia would serve Moscow’s interests. Geography, however, leaves Warsaw and Kyiv little room for a lasting rupture.
This week, Tusk has warned that Russia may send drones or missiles into countries supporting Ukraine and present the strikes as accidents to test whether NATO members agree on what constitutes an attack and how they should respond.
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The same uncertainty hangs over future security guarantees for Ukraine. Washington’s envoys continue talks with Putin, but a settlement remains distant. Moreover, Ukraine’s Western partners have yet to agree on what meaningful security guarantees would look like or how they would be enforced if Russia attacked again. Ideas have ranged from deploying European troops after a ceasefire to offering Ukraine an Article 5-style commitment without NATO membership. But a secure Ukraine capable of deterring another invasion runs against the Kremlin’s objectives, while Washington has yet to reach a consensus on how far it is prepared to go.
“What the American role could be in providing such guarantees, you tell me,” Sikorski noted.