Bad news for Hungary? Trump works on further economic penalties on Russia

US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is open to the possibility of sending more American troops to Poland if Warsaw requests the increase and suggested his administration is working on further economic penalties on Russia.

“We’ll put more there if they want. But they long wanted to have a larger presence. We have some countries that have more, not too many, but they’ll be staying in Poland. We’re very much aligned with Poland,” the US president told reporters in the Oval Office, where he was hosting his right-wing Polish counterpart, Karol Nawrocki.

“We never even thought in terms of removing soldiers from Poland. We do think about it with regard to other countries, but we would never, no. We’re with Poland all the way, and we will help Poland protect itself,” he added.

There are roughly 10,000 US troops stationed in Poland, and Nawrocki said in remarks before he went behind closed doors with Trump that their presence marks the first time in history that “the Poles are happy that we have foreign soldiers in Poland.”

“The American soldiers are part of our society,” he said. “This is the signal to the world and also to the Russian Federation that we are together, but we are not like the free riders in Europe and in NATO.”

Nawrocki further pledged to meet NATO’s heightened defense spending goal of 5% of GDP, a benchmark established at Trump’s behest as he seeks to pressure allies to increase their defense expenditures.

Trump also responded defensively when asked by a reporter about a hitherto lack of penalties on Russia for its continued war against Ukraine, pointing to secondary sanctions he imposed on India for its ongoing purchases of Russian oil, claiming it cost Moscow “hundreds of billions of dollars.”