Kremlin's Frozen Assets In Europe Will Never Be Returned To Russia - Sikorski

(MENAFN- UkrinForm) Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said this during his speech at the Europe Future Forum in Warsaw, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

“ Russian state assets frozen in Europe will never be returned to Russia. In the future, they can be used as war reparations or to help Ukraine rebuild, or they can be used already now to prevent further destruction and reduce the cost of future reconstruction,” Sikorski said. The European Union had frozen more than €200 billion in Russian state assets, Sikorski said, adding that these funds would help Ukraine withstand the war, but would still not be enough for Ukraine to win it.

The Polish foreign minister also stressed that even the end of the war would not mean the disappearance of the Russian threat. He warned Europe against underestimating Russian militarism and called for continued efforts to strengthen its own defense capabilities.

Sikorski said that Poland spends around 7% of its GDP on defense, but stressed that a comprehensive security architecture cannot be built through the efforts of individual states alone.

European NATO members have doubled their military spending since 2014, he said, and noted that if European allies fulfill the commitments made at the NATO summit in The Hague, their annual defense spending will exceed €800 billion by 2035.

“We need to be strong enough to deter Putin,” Sikorski said.

He also drew particular attention to the defense spending of the Baltic region countries. According to Sikorski, the combined military budget of the ten member states of the Council of the Baltic Sea States is already larger, even in peacetime, than Russia's military budget, as Russia enters the fifth year of its war against Ukraine.

At the same time, Poland's top diplomat noted that the problem increasingly lies not in the amount of money Europe spends on defense, but in the capabilities it acquires as a result.

Sikorski identified the development of long-range strike capabilities, the use of artificial intelligence for data analysis, cyber capabilities, as well as the mass deployment of drones and counter-drone systems among Europe's current defense priorities.

“You cannot fight drones with sticks and stones,” Sikorski stressed.

Read also: Sikorski: Russian terrorism is not knocking on EU's door – it is already in the hous

He also stressed the need to learn the lessons of Russia's war against Ukraine.

“We cannot afford to lose another war to Russia,” the Polish foreign minister said.

As previously reported by Ukrinform, the Polish prime minister recently said that Poland must be prepared for increased Russian activity in the coming weeks and months, and that the possibility that the escalation could also affect Polish territory cannot be ruled out.

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