By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he met Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in Washington on Friday and discussed “fair and reciprocal market access” and the “need for NATO Allies to increase defense investment without delay”.
“We also discussed the Russia-Ukraine war and the need for all NATO Allies to increase their defense investment without delay,” Rubio said on social media platform X after the meeting, adding that reciprocity in market access was another topic raised.
Asked after the meeting whether he understood Washington’s negotiating tactics regarding Ukraine, the Polish foreign minister said that was a question for the U.S. side, but that he “got the impression that the United States was committed to lasting peace”.
He declined to comment on what Rubio had told him about talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing for a deal to end the war in Ukraine and held separate calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week.
Trump’s top officials, including Rubio, met their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia this week in talks that did not include Ukraine. Trump also called Zelenskiy a dictator on Wednesday. Trump has urged the presidents of Russia and Ukraine to work together on ending the war, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. It had annexed Crimea in 2014.
Trump has demanded that NATO countries raise their defense spending. Despite almost doubling their defense expenditure since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, European nations on average still spend below NATO’s 2% of GDP guidelines.
Poland spends the most among NATO members as a proportion of its GDP at a NATO-estimated 4.1% in 2024, while eight of the military and political alliance’s 32 members spend less than 2%.
Trump has threatened not to protect allies who fail to spend enough.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington)
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