Poland won’t give up ‘a single inch’ of territory says Tusk after warning over Russian drones
Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk has insisted that his country will not surrender any territory whatsoever in any future conflict with Russia.
His statement comes shortly after he warned on Thursday that the Kremlin is plotting hybrid strikes with drones and rockets across European countries supporting Ukraine.
Tusk was responding to president Karol Nawrocki who wrote on X on Thursday: “We are a nation that may lose territory, but we will never lose our soul; we may surrender territory, but we will never surrender our Homeland.”
The prime minister responded: “My President, I suggest deleting this post. We do not intend to give up even a scrap of our territory.”
He later doubled down with a video posted to X of him, saying: “Loyalty to our allies and determination - that is our common strength. We will not yield a single inch of territory.”
On Thursday, the Polish leader landed in Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and warned of “difficult weeks and months ahead of us.”
Tensions have been rising across Europe amid concerns that president Vladimir Putin could extend hybrid attacks to Nato countries after a spate of airspace violations attributed to Russia.
Tusk has been calling for a bolstering of defences along Nato’s eastern flank and called for a no-fly zone in September last year.
“There is a real risk that drones or other types of projectiles will enter the territory of one or several countries on the eastern flank and even cause destruction,” Tusk warned onThursday.
“The official narration will be that it’s an accident and there is no reason for Nato to think about a response.”
Poland’s deputy defence minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said on Friday that a potential permanent US army base would be located in the west of the country after US president Donald Trump said progress was being made to establish it.
Meanwhile, French president Emmanuel Macron held an emergency meeting to a meeting to discuss the impact of both the war in Ukraine and the Middle East crisis on fuel prices in his country.
Russia insists it does not want war with Europe, but Putin has previously made claims that Moscow is “ready to fight”. Earlier this week veteran foreign minister Sergei Lavrov warned any fight between Russia and Europe would be “very short”.
Last month, CIA director John Ratcliffe made a rare trip to Moscow, the first since his predecessor made a visit in the weeks before the country’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Sources familiar with the matter told CBS News and the Wall Street Journal that Ratcliffe made the journey in order to warn Russia against attacking Nato.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the claims “scare stories”, adding that they “have nothing to do with reality” and added that Moscow “is facing a very aggressive policy towards itself from European countries.”
