Poland Aims to ‘Get Closer’ to 5% GDP Defense Spending Next Year

Poland aims to earmark around five percent of its economic output for military expenditure next year compared with 4.7 percent this year, its defense minister said on Thursday.

Staunch allies of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states - all neighbors of Russia - far outstrip NATO's two-percent-of-GDP target on defense.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday told NATO to commit to spending five percent of GDP on defense and dismissed as "hysteria" questions about President Donald Trump's commitment to the alliance.

"Five percent is definitely the goal we want to achieve next year, to get closer and closer to five percent," Poland's Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told reporters.

Fearing threats from Russia, Poland has for several years rapidly modernized its military, with a string of arms purchase contracts, mainly from the United States and South Korea.