Poland urges stronger NATO deterrence as Ukraine war grinds on

Radosław Sikorski said he would not rule out Russia staging a false-flag operation to justify an attack on a NATO member state, sharpening Poland’s warning that the alliance still underestimates the risk on its eastern frontier. The Polish deputy prime minister and foreign minister made the remarks in a CBS News interview that landed as NATO was tightening its posture around Ukraine and Russia.

The warning came against the backdrop of NATO’s June 3 visit to Kyiv, when the North Atlantic Council met in Ukraine for the first time. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the trip sent a strong message of the enduring bond between NATO and Ukraine, a signal that alliance leaders want to keep visible as the war drags into another year and Moscow keeps pressure on the border states that flank Russia and Belarus.

Warsaw has been pushing that point hard. The Polish government has said any discussion about Ukraine’s future must take into account the security interests of NATO’s eastern flank, a line that reflects Poland’s view that the war is not just a Ukrainian problem but a direct test of the alliance’s front line. Sikorski has repeatedly framed Russia’s invasion as a threat to Polish and European security, and his comments fit that broader effort to keep Washington focused on deterrence, not only diplomacy.

Poland’s own spending underscores how seriously it takes the threat. Recent NATO-linked reporting says Poland led the alliance in defense spending in 2025 at about 4.3% of GDP, far above the NATO benchmark and a sign of how deeply the war has reshaped Polish security policy. The figure also helps explain why Warsaw has been pressing for continued support for Ukraine ahead of the 2026 NATO summit in Ankara.

At the same time, Poland’s relationship with Kyiv has not been friction-free. Warsaw has remained one of Ukraine’s strongest backers militarily and politically, but agriculture disputes and border disruptions have periodically strained ties, complicating cooperation even as both governments face the same Russian threat. Sikorski, who has served as foreign minister since 2023 and deputy prime minister since 2025, also brings a hard-edged security background to the debate, with past work as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola.

For Washington, the message from Warsaw is blunt: frontline NATO states are preparing for the possibility that Moscow will probe the alliance’s seams, and they want U.S. commitments calibrated to that risk rather than to any assumption that the war’s spillover can be contained inside Ukraine.