Poland has downplayed the significance of a US decision to pull its troops out of a key Polish base supplying military aid to Ukraine.
The move to redeploy of US personnel from Rzeszów-Jasionka, south-eastern Poland, was “the result of plans adopted after the NATO summit in Washington in 2024″, said a post on X from the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces on April 8.
Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, defence minister and deputy prime minister in Donald Tusk’s government, added the same day, also on X: “US troops remain in Poland!”
They would simply be “in different locations”, while “now the mission in Jasionka involves mainly Norwegian, German, British and Polish troops”, he added.
Not everyone has shared the Tusk government’s optimism.
The American’s removal of concrete slabs and a technical support yard from the Jasionka complex, which included the prompt dismantling of a 60,000 square metre staging area, showed “real signs of an end to US financial aid for Ukraine”, wrote Polish MEP Tomasz Buczek on X.
Roman Sheremeta, an economics professor at the American University Kyiv said, also on X: “It seems that everything is being set up for the US to hand Ukraine over to Russia through so-called capitulation negotiations.”
US army newspaper Stars and Stripes reported: “The “US forces’ exit from Polish city key to arming Ukraine is [the] latest shift of burden to Europe.”
It has also emerged that neither US defence secretary Pete Hegseth or any other senior US official would attend an April 11 meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group.
That would mark the first time the gathering of 50 countries to co-ordinate military aid for Ukraine proceeding without US involvement.
The US was “still assessing how its officials will participate in the various forums that support Ukraine, including those that help manage security assistance and training”, a US official said.
The small regional airport at Jasionka, close to the Polish border with Ukraine, was turned into a temporary US base in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
With US Patriot air defence systems installed along its runways, which were upgraded to accommodate large military transport aircraft, Jasionka soon became the largest hub for Western military equipment being transported to Ukraine and Ukrainian casualties being evacuated to hospitals in Europe.
“After three years at Jasionka, this is an opportunity to right-size our footprint and save American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per year,” US army General Christopher Donahue, commander of US forces in Europe and Africa, said in a statement on April 7.
If Jasionka was no longer a top priority for the US, it nonetheless appeared to be one for Russia.
In March, Poland’s domestic spy service uncovered a Russian espionage ring that had set up cameras by Jasionka airport, powered by solar panels.
Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) dismantled the network of Russian-paid operatives after discovering cameras powered by solar panels with wireless internet connection placed along railway tracks and near Jasionka airport—a major hub for military aid to Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/FZSywMoowE
— Alicja Ptak (@AlicjaPtak4) March 7, 2025
