Donald Tusk: Ukraine is ready to continue the war with Russia for another two or three years

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Ukraine is ready to continue the war with Russia for another two or three years, but fears that the conflict could drag on for decades. In addition, according to him, Kiev is concerned about how long the country will be able to endure the war - both in terms of human casualties and from an economic point of view, Focus writes.

"I have no doubts that Ukraine will remain an independent state. Now the main question is how many casualties there will be. "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told me that he hopes the war will not last ten years, but Ukraine is ready to fight for another two or three years," he said in an interview with The Times.

Tusk had previously said that Ukraine had the right to strike targets linked to Russia anywhere in Europe. The statement came after a court in Warsaw rejected Germany's request to extradite a Ukrainian diver accused of undermining the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in 2022.

Tusk noted that a full-scale war was destroying the Russian economy, which he said had "no chance of surviving in the long term" and was facing "dramatic" problems - amid new US sanctions on oil companies.

After a meeting of the "coalition of the willing" European leaders expressed hope that by Christmas they would be able to reach a decision on granting Ukraine access to frozen Russian assets. British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper urged allies to "act immediately": "We need to get to the Russian money. Now that the sanctions have started to take effect, it is the right time to increase economic pressure to push Putin to negotiate".

However, according to the Polish prime minister, domestic instability will make Putin even more aggressive and it is not yet clear how "sustainable" US President Donald Trump's new tough approach to Moscow will be.

"The Russians are in a deep economic crisis. But can we say that we are winning? Absolutely not. They have one serious advantage over the West, especially Europe: they are ready to fight. And in wartime, this is a decisive factor. You cannot win if you are not ready to fight or at least sacrifice something,“ he emphasizes.