Russia plans to strike Ukraine’s NATO allies, Poland says

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Russia plans to launch “hybrid-style” drone and missile strikes against nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO-member Poland, as the war enters its most crucial phase.

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The Kremlin’s main goal now, as supported by evidence gathered by intelligence services, is to destroy Ukraine’s economy and logistics and weaken NATO’s resolve by attacks on its member states, Tusk said in parliament on Thursday. This is the “most likely scenario,” the premier told lawmakers ahead of his planned visit to Ukraine on Friday.

Poland, as a key transit route for aid to Ukraine, has suffered a spate of suspicious incidents, with multiple cyberattacks on public utilities like water, energy infrastructure and hospitals, and damage to the rail line between Warsaw and the Ukrainian border attributed to Russian sabotage. A Russian missile crashed in eastern Poland in late July.

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“There is a real risk that drones or other types of missiles may fly into the territory of one or more NATO countries on the eastern flank, even cause destruction,” Tusk said. Russia’s “official narrative will be that this is an accident and that there is no reason for anyone to think about any response from NATO.”

The comments were made hours before Tusk met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Moscow has intensified attacks against Ukraine, including at targets close to the Polish border, while NATO jets shot down a drone of Russian origin over Lithuania earlier this week.

Tusk’s warnings were echoed by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who said on Thursday that the security situation had never been “so serious and so tense.” He stressed that Slovakia takes its NATO commitments seriously, but that he’d do everything in his power to avoid his country being dragged into a conflict.

Fico’s position has long diverged from the NATO mainstream, as he doesn’t regard Russia as a security threat and instead advocates rapprochement with Moscow. He warned of the consequences of invoking NATO’s Article 5, which requires members to defend each other from attack, in the event of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia.

“Can anyone imagine that we’re told to prepare 5,000 soldiers, 10,000 soldiers? And they’ll go to fight somewhere, we don’t even know with whom, why or for what?” Fico said.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a fellow critic of the European mainstream, made similar remarks. “The path the world is on leads straight to the gates of hell. It is leading us to WWIII,” he said at an address to the IISS Prague Defense Summit.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he’ll meet with government and party leaders, along with military and security officials, on Friday to address a “rapidly worsening” situation concerning security and energy supplies amid conflicts including Ukraine and the Middle East.

Kyiv and its western allies are bracing themselves for what’s likely to be the most difficult winter since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion four and a half years ago. Tusk said he will discuss with Zelenskyy possible cooperation through the so-called ”anti-ballistic coalition” as well as the situation around Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

“Sustained, very frequent and intense attacks are expected on six major Ukrainian cities, including the destruction of warehouses, all types of products essential for the country’s defense, and, as we have witnessed very strongly in recent weeks, the railway infrastructure,” the prime minister said.

According to information Poland has received about US-Russia consultations, the Kremlin isn’t ready for “any serious talks about a ceasefire, not to mention peace without — de-facto — Ukraine’s capitulation,” Tusk said.

“They are convinced the winter will be tragically critical for Ukraine,” the prime minister said about Russia.

—With assistance from Wojciech Moskwa, Daniel Hornak and Michal Kubala.

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