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Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has called Donald Trump’s decision to hold direct talks with Vladimir Putin a “mistake”. He also warned him that failing to ensure a fair peace for Ukraine would undermine US credibility and embolden China in its ambitions to take Taiwan.

Sikorski was speaking today on a public panel at the Munich Security Conference alongside his German, French and British counterparts.

“I think the call was a mistake,” he said, regarding Trump’s conversation with Putin on Wednesday this week.

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Asked what he would like to tell Trump, Sikorski listed three things. First, that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had “planted the US flag in downtown Kyiv and declared on behalf of the United States that the US will be with Ukraine for as long as it takes until Ukraine secures its independence.”

“Therefore, the credibility of the United States depends on how this war ends – not just the Trump administration, but the United States.”

Secondly, said Sikorski, “I would tell him that if you allow Putin to vassalise Ukraine, that will send a message to China that you can recover what you regard as a renegade province, and that would have direct consequences for US grand strategy, for the US system of alliances, and possibly for the future of Taiwan”.

Finally, Sikorski said, jokingly to laughs from the audience, “I would tell him that we Europeans control the Nobel Peace Prize [so] if you want to earn it the peace has to be fair”. Last month, an unnamed Trump advisor told CBS News that the US president had “a hyper fixation” on winning the Nobel prize.

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Earlier this week, Sikorski also criticised Poland’s domestic opposition, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, for “fawning and sucking up” to the new Trump administration. This “humiliates me as a Pole”, said Sikorski, who suggested that PiS politicians should “get up off their knees”.

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