Speaking at a congress of the European People's Party (EPP) in Bucharest on Thursday, Tusk said: "We are living in new times, in a prewar epoch."
Referencing Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Tusk warned that "the times of blissful calm are over" and that the "postwar epoch is gone."
"In fact, for some of our brothers, it is no longer even a prewar time; it is a full-scale war in its most cruel form," he said in the Romanian capital.
"It is not our fault that our daily vocabulary once again includes such words as fighting, bombings, rocket attacks, genocide," Tusk added.
He told the gathering that Europe today must recognise that it is "faced with a simple choice: either we undertake the fight to defend our borders, our territory, our principles, and as a consequence our citizens and future generations, or we will fall."
"There is no objective reason to capitulate before evil," he stated.
"The potential of Europe, economic, financial, demographic, moral, is greater than the potential of those who attack us," he argued. "It is crucial today that Europe believes in its strength.”
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Source: PAP, IAR, nv.ua