Germany and Poland signed a new defense agreement on Wednesday, putting aside their complicated past to strengthen European military cooperation amid heightened tensions with Russia and growing uncertainty over U.S. engagement in Europe.

Axar.az informs, citing The Associated Press, relations between the two neighbors in recent years have become more pragmatic in the wake of Russia’s full‑scale war on Ukraine in 2022 and the coming to power of a liberal government in Poland in 2023.

“We are not forgetting the past,” Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said in Warsaw during a press conference with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius. “But the politics of the future, development and security are our obligation.”

As the U.S. weighs a partial drawdown of its military presence in Europe, Poland is keen to ensure that major European allies take a greater role in defending the continent’s eastern flank.

Germany seeks partners as it moves to revitalize its military, the Bundeswehr, after decades of neglect, with ambitions to build the strongest conventional army on NATO’s European side — an effort that will make it a central pillar of European defense in the years ahead.