Europe must face up to ‘pre-war era’ and greatest threat since 1945, Poland says

Poland has said Europe is entering a “pre-war era” and faces the greatest threat to its security since the second World War, as Russia launched more missile and drone attacks on Ukraine and dismissed prospects for a peace plan drawn up by Kyiv.

“I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past. It is real ... What is most worrying now is that literally any scenario is possible. We have not had a situation like this since 1945,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk told newspapers from several European countries in a joint interview.

“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,” he added.

Mr Tusk said Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez had asked at a recent European Union summit that the bloc “stop using the word ‘war’ in statements” because it sounded both threatening and abstract to his people.

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“I replied that in my part of Europe, war is no longer an abstraction ... We must be ready. Europe still has a long way to go,” the Polish leader said.

“Our main task should be to protect Ukraine from Russian invasion and to maintain Ukraine as an independent and integral state ... Today we have to spend as much as we can to buy equipment and ammunition for Ukraine, because we are living in the most critical moment since the end of the second World War,” he added.

“The next two years will decide everything. If we cannot support Ukraine with enough equipment and ammunition, if Ukraine loses, no one in Europe will be able to feel safe.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin dismissed as “nonsense” this week any suggestion that his country might attack a Nato state, two years after he launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians and displaced millions of Ukrainians.

Ukraine said it shot down 58 of 60 explosive “Shahed” drones and 26 of 39 missiles fired by Moscow’s military early on Friday in its latest attack on the country’s energy infrastructure.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said hydroelectric power plants at Kaniv on the Dnipro river in central Ukraine and on the Dniester river in the southwest near Moldova had been targeted. He accused Moscow of risking a repeat of the ecological disaster caused when the Russian-occupied Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro collapsed last June.

“But now not only Ukraine, but also Moldova is under threat,” he said, urging western states to accelerate provision of air defence ammunition amid intense Russian missile and drone strikes.

Mr Zelenskiy is seeking broad international support for a 10-point peace plan that would oblige Moscow to withdraw its invasion force from Ukraine, pay reparations and face justice over war crimes allegations.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said several key aspects of the plan were unacceptable, including the return of occupied territory to Kyiv’s control.