Europe has entered ‘pre-war era’, says Poland’s prime minister

London: Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned that Europe has entered a “pre-war era” reminiscent of the late 1930s and says if Ukraine is defeated by Russia, then nobody in Europe will feel safe.

Tusk, who previously served as prime minister between 2007 and 2014, used his first foreign interview since his return to office to urge the leaders of his neighbouring countries to do more to bolster their defences.

Donald Tusk says “literally any scenario is possible” in Europe because of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Credit: AP

His comments come amid a fresh barrage of Russian missiles targeting Ukraine, which has intensified its bombardment of several cities, including the capital, Kyiv, in recent weeks.

Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 58 drones and 26 missiles, and the government said energy infrastructure had been damaged in six regions, in the west, centre and east of the country. Last week, a Russian missile also entered Polish airspace, prompting Warsaw to activate F-16 fighter jets.

A former president of the European Council, Tusk said Russian President Vladimir Putin had already blamed Ukraine for the jihadist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall without any evidence and “evidently feels the need to justify increasingly violent attacks on civil targets in Ukraine”.

“I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past,” he said. “It’s real and it started over two years ago.”

“I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to the arrival of a new era ... the pre-war era. I don’t exaggerate. This is becoming more and more apparent every day.”

Tusk said regardless of whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump wins November’s US presidential election, Europe would become a more attractive partner to the US if it became more self-sufficient militarily.

Sandwiched between Germany and Russia, Poland has long been aware of the importance of strong defence and has spent 4 per cent of its economic output on its military in the past few years. It aims to have the largest army and the biggest fleet of tanks in mainland Europe.

Tusk said every other European country should spend 2 per cent of GDP on its own defences.

He said since Moscow had launched its full-scale war in Ukraine, relations with the West had reached their lowest ebb since the worst days of the Cold War.

Meanwhile, Putin himself said this week that Moscow had “no aggressive intentions” towards NATO countries.

He said the idea that his armed forces would attack Poland, the Baltic states and the Czech Republic was “complete nonsense” but added if Ukraine used Western F-16 warplanes from airfields in other countries, they would become “legitimate targets, wherever they might be located”.

Appealing for urgent military aid for Ukraine, Tusk warned that the next two years of the war would decide everything and said his European partners had “a long way to go” before they would be ready to resist a direct Russian offensive.

“We are living in the most critical moment since the end of the Second World War,” he said, adding: “Literally any scenario is possible”.

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