President Joe Biden hosted Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk at the White House on Tuesday as NATO continues its efforts to assist Ukraine’s defense against a Russian invasion.
Some European allies have reportedly expressed concerns to U.S. officials regarding Republican lawmakers’ refusal to meet Biden’s calls for a new round of Ukraine aid. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has so far declined to take up a bipartisan Ukraine border bill worth roughly $100 billion that the Senate passed last month.
Still, Biden’s meeting with the Polish leaders could prove fraught, as the two are staunch political opponents. The pair frequently spar through the media and have accused each other of violating the Polish Constitution.
“I differ politically with President Andrzej Duda on almost everything, but when it comes to the security of our homeland, we must and will act together,” Tusk wrote on Twitter before traveling to Washington.
Tuesday’s meeting featured a relatively crowded manifest, at least compared to Biden’s past bilateral engagements. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski, and several other administration officials all took part in the meeting, which was hosted in the East Room of the White House as opposed to the more intimate Oval Office.
“When we stand together, no force on Earth is more powerful,” Biden stated at the top of the meeting. “I believed that then, and I believe it now.”
He also lauded Poland for far exceeding its 2% gross domestic product commitment to NATO’s defense capabilities. The country is spending 4% of its GDP on arming NATO forces.
Poland has admitted more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees since fighting began in 2022, and as a means of easing any potential tensions with and within the country, the White House announced plans to move forward with a $2 billion Foreign Military Financing loan while offering to sell Poland an additional 96 Apache attack helicopters.
“These and other initiatives will equip Poland with cutting-edge capability to defend itself while also strengthening NATO interoperability and contributing to American jobs,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters ahead of the meeting. “The leaders will also discuss the strong U.S.-Polish energy security partnership, the robust economic relationship between our countries, and the enduring importance of democratic values.”
Sullivan additionally announced Tuesday that Biden had approved an emergency tranche of security funding for Ukraine, worth roughly $300 million, made possible by cost savings pursuant to past Department of Defense drawdowns.
“We budgeted the full amount of appropriated funds for those contracts. It turns out we negotiated well. Those contracts came in under budget. So we have a modest amount of funding available,” he explained. “To put a fine point on it, we’re able to use these cost savings to make this modest amount of new security assistance available right now without impacting U.S. military readiness.”
“It’s not nearly enough what we are announcing today,” Biden said of the $300 million bill during his bilateral meeting. “Congress must pass the bipartisan national security bill now.”
Sullivan claimed that this latest bill, which will include weapons, ammunition, and other equipment, could be exhausted in just a few weeks and again stated that Congress must approve an additional drawdown to ensure Ukraine’s security.
“This ammunition will keep Ukraine’s guns firing for a period, but only a short period. It is nowhere near enough to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs, and it will not prevent Ukraine from running out of ammunition in the weeks to come,” he continued. “It goes without saying this package does not displace and should not delay the critical need to pass the bipartisan national security bill.”
Despite stonewalling from House Republicans, Biden resubmitted his Ukraine supplemental request in his budget proposal for fiscal 2025 on Monday. This new request allocated $92 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and Indo-Pacific partners and an additional $4.7 billion in “contingency” funding to deal with security at the border.
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre again claimed Tuesday that Republicans had tanked the Senate’s Ukraine-border bill to appease former President Donald Trump.
“They chose politics instead of a majority of American people,” she told reporters. “But we want to see this bipartisan Senate negotiation proposal move forward that Republicans are rejecting because of Donald Trump. They are putting politics — politics ahead of what works for the American people, what the American people actually want to see.”