Poland is ready to host nuclear arms if Nato decides to deploy the weapons in the face of Russia reinforcing its armaments in Belarus and Kaliningrad, the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, said in an interview published on Monday.

Poland, a Nato member and a staunch supporter of Ukraine, shares a border with both Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and with Belarus, Moscow’s ally.

Kaliningrad was cut off from Moscow when Lithuania became independent during the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

“If our allies decide to deploy nuclear arms on our territory as part of nuclear sharing, to reinforce Nato’s eastern flank, we are ready to do so,” Duda said in an interview published by the Fakt daily.

Duda spoke to the Polish media after a visit to New York, where he held meetings at the UN and discussed the war in Ukraine with former US president Donald Trump. In March, he visited Washington DC, where he met with US President Joe Biden.

Discussions about nuclear cooperation between Poland and the US have been ongoing “for some time”, he said.

“I have already talked about this several times. I must admit that when asked about it, I declared our readiness,” Duda said.

“Russia is increasingly militarising Kaliningrad. Recently it has been relocating its nuclear weapons to Belarus,” he added.

In June 2023, Vladimir Putin confirmed that Russia had sent tactical nuclear arms to Belarus, which borders Ukraine and Poland.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has warned that the support of the US, Britain and France for Ukraine was stoking serious strategic risks that had raised the risk of a direct confrontation between the world’s biggest nuclear powers.

Lavrov said the US and Nato were obsessed with the idea of inflicting “strategic defeat” on Russia and there were risks in such confrontation that could lead to an increased level of nuclear danger, Reuters reported.

Lavrov said:

The westerners are teetering dangerously on the brink of a direct military clash between nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences …

Of particular concern is the fact that it is the ‘troika’ of western nuclear states that are among the key sponsors of the criminal Kyiv regime, the main initiators of various provocative steps. We see serious strategic risks in this, leading to an increase in the level of nuclear danger.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, told western countries in February they risked provoking a nuclear war if they sent troops to fight in Ukraine, warning that Moscow had the weapons to strike targets in the west.

This was in reference to a suggestion, floated by French President Emmanuel Macron, of European Nato members possibly sending ground troops to Ukraine – a suggestion that was quickly rejected by many EU members and his since faded away.

Western security analysts say Moscow’s statements are designed to deter and intimidate, but they have not prevented the US and its Nato allies from providing aid, intelligence, training and weapons to Ukraine – including tanks and long-range missiles.

Good morning and welcome to our Ukraine blog.

Russia said on Sunday its forces had advanced towards the town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine and seized control of the settlement of Bohdanivka, as Kyiv said it urgently needed promised US support to fend off a full-scale offensive.

“Units of the Southern grouping group of forces have fully liberated the settlement of Bohdanivka … and have improved the situation along the frontline,” Russia’s defence ministry wrote on Telegram.

Control of Bohdanivka, located just to the west of the Russian-held city of Bakhmut, has been in doubt for some time.

The village lies 5km east of Chasiv Yar, a heavily fortified hilltop town and forward artillery base for the Ukrainian army, providing protection for some of the area’s largest cities, including Kramatorsk and Slaviansk.

The Russian report could not be independently verified and there was no comment from Ukraine regarding Bohdanivka.

It came as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that Ukraine was preparing for a major push from the Russians, reiterating warnings from his army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi that Russia aims to capture Chasiv Yar by 9 May, one of Russia’s largest public holidays and which marks Moscow’s victory over Nazi forces in the second world war.

In other developments:

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the US Senate to rapidly ratify the long-delayed military aid package passed by Congress over the weekend, warning that his country was preparing its defences amid fears there could be a large Russian offensive before the fresh supplies reach the frontline. “We really need to get this to the final point. We need to get it approved by the Senate … so that we get some tangible assistance for the soldiers on the frontline as soon as possible, not in another six months,” he said. “I hope we will be able to stay, and the weapons will come on time, and we will repel the enemy, and then we’ll break the plans of the Russian Federation with regards to this full-scale offensive,” Zelenskiy added.

• In the interview with US television network NBC, he also said that Saturday’s vote showed Ukraine would not be “a second Afghanistan”, whose pro-western government collapsed during an US-led pull out in the summer of 2021. Zelenskiy said his immediate priorities were air-defence systems such as the US-made Patriots and long-range missiles such as Atacms, which can travel up to 186 miles (300km) and which the House has called on the Pentagon to provide promptly.

• Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said the delay in US military assistance for Ukraine had “real consequences” on the battlefield, but said Kyiv will “prevail” as long as they are equipped with the weapons they need to fend off the Russian invasion. In an interview with MSNBC, he said: “The Ukrainians have now, for months, been outgunned, roughly one to five, one to 10, depending on what part of the frontline you are talking about.” He added: “We have seen that fewer Russian missiles and drones have been shot down simply because they lack air defence systems and also ammunition.”

• The EU’s next package of sanctions should include steps against a shadow fleet of tankers moving Russian oil to circumvent sanctions, Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billstrom, said ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
  “Adopting the 14th sanctions package is one of the most important things,” Billstrom said as he arrived at the meeting. “We will see to it that we both include an import ban on liquefied natural gas as well as measures to curb the Russian shadow fleet.”

• Ukrainian air defence units destroyed 5 of the 7 Shahed-type drones and one Orlan-10 reconnaissance drone that Russia launched overnight, the air force said on Monday. The drones were reportedly launched from Cape Chauda in occupied Crimea.