Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Poland is now the closest it has come to armed conflict since World War II, but there is no reason to say the country is in a state of war, while speaking in the Polish parliament on Wednesday. “There are no reasons to claim that we have found ourselves in a state of war, but there is no doubt that this provocation is incomparably more dangerous from Poland’s point of view than the previous ones.” According to Tusk, Poland shot down about four Russian drones and recorded 19 intrusions into its airspace overnight, with a large portion of these drones arriving from Belarus. In a move that he and President Karol Nawrocki agreed upon, Tusk stated that Poland invoked Article 4 of NATO to request a formal consultation within the alliance. Since NATO’s founding in 1949, Article 4 has only been used seven times, most recently in 2022, right after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.