President Duda hails Biden's UN address and his "tough, yet composed line" on Russia

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Biden slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin for starting an unprovoked war that some 40 U.N. members were helping Ukraine fight through funding and weapons. Earlier on Wednesday, Putin ordered a Russian mobilization to fight in Ukraine and made a thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons, in what NATO called a "reckless" act of desperation in the face of a looming Russian defeat. Biden echoed that sentiment. "Again, just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe, in a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the nonproliferation regime," Biden said. "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," he added. Biden said no one had threatened Russia, despite its claims to the contrary, and that only Russia had sought conflict, and he used the U.N. setting to underscore his view that Moscow had violated the body's values. "A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase a sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter," Biden said. "This war is about extinguishing Ukraine's right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine's right to exist as a people. Wherever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should ... make your blood run cold." Russia's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Biden's remarks. While Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in New York for the U.N. gathering, a deputy Russian U.N. ambassador was in the chamber for Biden's speech.

President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday told "Fakty" TVN reporter Marcin Wrona that he and his aides, as well Poland's Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, had seen Biden's UN address as an "adequate comment, without much referring to that speech (Vladimir Putin's annoucement of partial military mobilization - edit.), without controversy, looking only at pure facts with which we will probably have to deal with soon in the occupied territories of Ukraine, and at the same time maintaining a very tough, decisive, yet very composed line consistently carried out by president Joe Biden, which is de facto a policy of the United States".

Asked if he was surprised with Joe Biden's tough and firm stance on Ukraine and Russia, Duda replied that the American president was "first and foremost a very experienced politician, who has been on the highest levels of American politics for many years now, who co-created it, and today is its main creator as United States president".

"So you could have expected he would be sensitively pursuing this policy and that's what is happening," he added.

President Duda also said the United States was the number one country in terms of military support for Ukraine. "When I spoke with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy or his aides, they underscored there were really three countries whose help was substantial and extremely valuable," he said.

"Those three countries are of course the United States, the United Kingdom - which is also very much involved - but also our country, Poland. It's very important to me. We are really in a triangle of countries which help Ukraine the most today, but the United States - due to its gigantic potential - is definitely in pole position and this is of absolutely fundamental importance for the Ukrainian resistance against the Russian invasion," Andrzej Duda told TVN24.

President Duda was also asked about the danger of Putin using nuclear weapons, if pushed to the wall.

"The question is - what does it mean pushed to wall," he replied. "Today Russia occupies Ukrainian territories. There is no war on Russian territory and there will be no war on Russian territory, because I don't think the Ukrainians - even if they manage to reclaim their lands and push the Russians out - would enter the territory of the Russian Federation - the one within internationally recognised borders, that is. Indeed the Ukrainians are fighting only to reclaim their own lands," he said.

He added that Russia was always ready to find an excuse to escalate the conflict, be it the Russian minority living in Ukraine, the territory or the attacks on Russian diplomats.

"I think that not only Vladimir Putin, but his associates as well, are aware what it would mean (using nuclear weapons - edit.). Of course they will keep on saying they have it, everyone knows that they have it, but they are also perfectly aware that using it (nuclear weapons - edit.) even to a smallest extent, even if they used some state-of-the-art, tiny nukes, tactical nuclear weapons, it would break the taboo and result in consequences impossible to predict today," Duda argued. "Then Russia would become enemy of the world," he added.