WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland will spend 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence in 2025, the foreign minister told Bloomberg Television in an interview broadcast on Friday evening.
Warsaw has already ramped up defence spending to more than 4% of its economic output this year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Poland spends 4 (percent of GDP on defence) and we are going to spend 5 next year,” Radoslaw Sikorski said. “We are number one in NATO including the United States, in proportion obviously, because we are no longer in eternal post-Cold War peace.”
Deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk told private broadcaster TVN24 on Thursday that Poland would increase its defence budget by about 10% in 2025 to a record high.
Army chief of staff General Wieslaw Kukula told a press conference on Wednesday that Poland needed to prepare its soldiers for all-out conflict.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Mark Potter)
