Trump’s call with Putin was a “mistake”, says Polish foreign minister

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has called Donald Trump’s decision to hold direct talks with Vladimir Putin a “mistake”. He also warned him that failing to ensure a fair peace for Ukraine would undermine US credibility and embolden China in its ambitions to take Taiwan.

Sikorski was speaking today on a public panel at the Munich Security Conference alongside his German, French and British counterparts.

“I think the call was a mistake,” he said, regarding Trump’s conversation with Putin on Wednesday this week.

“I argued against an early summit,” Sikorski added, likely referring to Trump’s announcement after the call that he may soon meet in person with Putin. “It vindicates Putin and lowers morale in Ukraine.”

Asked what he would like to tell Trump, Sikorski listed three things. First, that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had “planted the US flag in downtown Kyiv and declared on behalf of the United States that the US will be with Ukraine for as long as it takes until Ukraine secures its independence”.

“Therefore, the credibility of the United States depends on how this war ends – not just the Trump administration, but the United States.”

Second, said Sikorski, “I would tell him that if you allow Putin to vassalise Ukraine, that will send a message to China that you can recover what you regard as a renegade province, and that would have direct consequences for US grand strategy, for the US system of alliances, and possibly for the future of Taiwan”.

Finally, Sikorski said, jokingly to laughs from the audience, “I would tell him that we Europeans control the Nobel Peace Prize [so] if you want to earn it the peace has to be fair”. Last month, an unnamed Trump advisor told CBS News that the US president had “a hyper fixation” on winning the Nobel prize.

The Polish foreign minister also addressed concerns that European leaders may be excluded from peace talks between Ukraine, Russia and the US. He noted that Trump himself had said that European troops would be placed in Ukraine as part of any deal.

“We’ll have to be asked to supply them, so sooner or later we’ll have to be involved,” said Sikorski, whose government has been a strong supporter of Ukraine and its right to decide on the terms of any peace deal.

“President Trump has a method of operating which the Russians call razvedka boyem, reconnaissance through battle: you push and you see what happens, and then you change your position,” said Sikorski.

“[These are] legitimate tactics and we need to respond to them,” he added, before revealing that France’s President Emmanuel Macron has called a summit of European leaders in Paris tomorrow at which the issue would be addressed.

Earlier this week, Sikorski also criticised Poland’s domestic opposition, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, for “fawning and sucking up” to the new Trump administration. This “humiliates me as a Pole”, said Sikorski, who suggested that PiS politicians should “get up off their knees”.

In a post on X last week, the incoming US ambassador to Poland, Thomas Rose, called Sikorski – a veteran of Polish politics and international affairs – “a great Polish patriot [and] one of the most experienced and thoughtful statesmen on the European stage”. However, Rose later deleted the post.

On a visit to Warsaw on Friday for his first bilateral talks since being appointed as Trump’s new defence secretary, Pete Hegseth hailed Poland as a “model ally” and declared that “our friendship, our bond, is ironclad, and we came here specifically to reinforce that”.

However, there have also been concerns that Poland’s current government may not enjoy the best relations with the Trump administration, especially given previous comments by senior figures, including Prime Minister Donald Tusk, that were critical of the new US president.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: MFA/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.