Europe can protect itself and Ukraine. But this requires political will
14.02.2025
Lukasz Adamski
Considering the newly elected US president’s statements, a Newssky correspondent asked Lukasz Adamski, deputy director of the Mieroszewski Center in Warsaw, historian, and international analyst, whether Europe can manage its security together with Great Britain and Canada and how, separately from America.
— Is the European Union able to defend itself from a Russian invasion?
In my opinion, Europe can defend itself from Russia, as well as to defend Ukraine. This requires political will to understand the situation and mobilize European communities, and European nations.
— How can this happen?
Until there is an urgent need and an awareness that the allied guarantees provided within NATO may not work, it seems that it will be quite difficult politically to convince European communities to radically increase spending on the army. Only military experts, people who have real information about the state of European armies, can tell more.
As far as I know, and I have had some conversations with such experts, from a military point of view Europe can do this, but political will is still needed to enter the war, even if the price of such a decision seems too high. We repeat the slogans from history — «We will not die for Gdańsk!» And now someone might say, «We won’t die for Narva or Daugavpils.» This is a chance for Putin to divide Europe and discourage it to fight back against Russian imperialism.
Deputy Editor-in-Chief (Central Europe and Canada) and Project Manager at V5 Media, Maryna Kovalchuk, contributed.
