Europe must get ready for looming war, Donald Tusk warns

WARSAW: The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, says Europe is entering a “prewar” era, cautioning that the continent is not ready and urging European countries to step up defence investment.

In an interview with a group of European newspapers reported by the BBC, Tusk said: “I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past. It’s real and it started over two years ago.”

Tusk’s comments came days after a Russian missile briefly breached Polish airspace during a major attack on Ukraine, prompting Warsaw to put its forces on heightened readiness. Ukrainian officials have said large-scale Russian missile and drone attacks had targeted energy infrastructure.

Tusk has been using his platform to try to add a sense of urgency to Europe’s debates about defence and aid to Ukraine, amid fears about the future of American assistance and concerns about defence industrial capacity. “True solidarity with Ukraine? Less words, more ammunition,” he wrote on social media earlier this month.

In another post, he addressed Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives. “How many more arguments do you need to take a decision?” he wrote.

The Polish prime minister said that regardless of the outcome of the US election this year, Europe would become a more attractive partner for Washington if it became more self-sufficient militarily.

He called for urgent assistance for Kyiv, saying the next two years of the war would decide everything and that “we are living in the most critical moment since the end of the second world war”.