Tusk: Poland will not join Trump’s Board of Peace “under current circumstances”

Feb 11, 2026 | Defence, Featured, Politics

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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.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that Poland will not accept the invitation to join US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace “under current circumstances” due to “certain doubts over its form”.

The issue put him at odds with opposition-aligned President Karol Nawrocki, a Trump ally, who has expressed support for Poland joining and today declared that he would be willing to sit on the board even alongside Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Nawrocki last month received an invitation from Trump for Poland to join the Board of Peace, which was established as part of the efforts to end the conflict in Gaza but appears to have a much wider remit.

However, joining an international organisation requires the approval of the government and parliament, as well as the president. Nawrocki therefore launched a consultation process with the foreign ministry.

Until now, the government has refused to say whether it favours or opposes joining. But, at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Tusk noted that Poland had been invited to the Board of Peace’s inaugural meeting in Washington on 19 February and now was therefore the time to make clear the government’s position.

 

“Under the current circumstances…Poland will not join the work of the Board of Peace,” declared Tusk. He said that those circumstances included “certain doubts over the form of the board”, as well as its “principles, status and immediate goals”.

He added, however, that “we will continue to analyse it, and we will remain very flexible and open” so that, “if there is a change in circumstances that makes joining the board possible, we are not ruling out any scenario”.

Tusk also stressed that good “relations with the United States will remain a priority”. Those relations have recently been strained after the US ambassador cut ties with the speaker of parliament, a Tusk ally, whom he accused of “outrageous insults” against Trump.

Later on Wednesday, Tusk, government ministers and members of parliament attended a meeting of the National Security Council called by Nawrocki, with Poland’s proposed membership of the Board of Peace one of the three items on the agenda.

While the meeting was held behind closed doors, during an introductory speech open to the media, the president criticised the government for previously failing to make its position clear on whether it supported joining the board.

He also hit out at “blatant disinformation” being spread that Poland would have to pay $1 billion to join. There would be no such fee for taking up the offer of a seat, said Nawrocki.

Finally, the president addressed the issue of how he could justify sitting on a board to which Putin – whose country invaded Ukraine and has carried out “hybrid warfare” operations in Poland – has also been invited.

“I would sit down with anyone if the interests of Poland required it,” said Nawrocki, who noted that he is personally on a wanted list in Russia for overseeing the demolition of Soviet monuments in Poland.

Nawrocki also pointed to the fact that Poland is a member of the United Nations, where Russia is present, and that it has been invited to attend next year’s summit of the G20, of which Russia is a member.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced today that Russia does not plan to attend the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace because its foreign ministry is still reviewing the invitation to join.

One country that has already joined is another of Poland’s eastern neighbours Belarus, which has also led a campaign of “hybrid actions” against Poland in recent years, including engineering a migration crisis on their shared border and regularly sending weather balloons into Polish airspace.

Today, the spokeswoman for Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that he has been invited to the 19 February Board of Peace meeting but that the invitation had arrived “late” and “the president’s schedule for that period was already planned”, so he will not personally attend.

Meanwhile, Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani today confirmed that Italy would not join the Board of Peace. France and Germany have also previously declined invitations to join, while the United Kingdom has not yet confirmed whether it will join or not.


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: Grzegorz Jakubowski/KPRP

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