Poland to increase defence spending plans in 2025, no longer capable of supplying Ukraine with weapons

Poland will spend 4.7% of its GDP on defense in 2025, up 0.6 percentage points from this year’s spending plans, according to plans for the new budget seen by Polish media.

Poland is already NATO’s biggest defense spender, with plans to spend 4.1% of GDP in 2024. However, the Polish government is considering increasing the defense budget by 0.6 percentage points further next year, Money.pl reports.

Poland thus sets a record both in terms of money and share of GDP and thus increases its defence spending, which is already estimated at $35 billion this year. This makes it NATO’s fifth-largest spender, with the US leading the way with an estimated $968 billion.  

Poland also hopes to transfer part of the costs to the EU budget, which would significantly relieve the national budget, a government source told Money.pl.

The argument would be that Poland shares the EU’s external border with Russia and war-torn Ukraine.

• Poland has already supplied Ukraine with all the weapons it could have given to the country, Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

"As of today, everything we could have given to Ukraine has been given to Ukraine," he told the PAP news agency. "The Polish government, ours and that of our predecessors, delivered weapons worth billions of dollars to Ukraine. That is all we could have given them," the minister added.