War in Ukraine: At the end of the decade, Europe will have an army that Putin would be crazy to attack, says the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski praises European defense action, which he believes will establish a deterrence policy against Vladimir Putin’s Russia in a few years.

Published on 18/05/2026 at 20:48 | Reading time: 1min

The Russo-Ukrainian conflict seems to be deepening, more than four years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia launched over 500 drones and around twenty missiles at Ukraine from Sunday night to Monday. However, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski remains confident. “By the end of the decade,” Europe will have “an army that Putin would be crazy to attack,” he declared on France Inter on Monday, May 18.

“The project to rebuild the Russian Empire is doomed to fail (…) Russia has been defeated many times in the past, including by France,” Sikorski emphasized. He pointed out that Europeans have been gaining strength for several months, a reassuring element in his view. “We have doubled our military spending in Europe since the election of Donald Trump. We don’t need to do heroic things, we just need to stick to our commitments at the NATO summit in The Hague last year,” Sikorski stated.

“And that’s the only way ‘deterrence will be effective’,” concluded the Polish Foreign Minister. According to him, there should be no change in strategy, as “Russia, once again, for a new generation, is squandering the resources and chances of their nation to create a normal country,” criticized the Polish Deputy Prime Minister.