An ominous warning of the threat of a new World War has come from Poland’s respected foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski. It is now necessary to be prepared for a war “of the scale that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers saw”, he told the Sejm, the Polish parliament. Pointing to the jeopardy posed by dictator Vladimir Putin, he warned of the prospect of conflicts on the scale of WW1 and WW2.

Sikorski highlighted what he sees as the serious threat posed by Vladimir Putin, warning that unchecked Russian aggression could lead to conflicts comparable in scale to the First and Second World Wars. He stressed that Poland—sharing borders with both Russia and Ukraine—would inevitably find itself on the frontline of any renewed hostility from Moscow.

Drawing on his own background as a former British citizen, he added that recognising such danger can have two very different effects: it can leave people frozen by fear, or it can spur them into taking action.

Poland cannot afford to be “paralysed” or reassured that this is “not its war”, he told MPs.

He said: “Putin doesn’t want peace, only surrender. If Ukraine were to be defeated, the threat from Russia would not only not decrease, but on the contrary, increase.”