Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski is ready for war with Russia. He has stocked up on rice, keeps a hand pump at home and made jam from the fruit in his garden ahead of the imminent invasion of Russian forces that could come at any time, he told the tabloid Fakt on September 22.

Sikorski has stoked an “enemies at the gate” narrative for weeks, as talk of a possible Russian attack on Nato gains momentum. One of the more outspoken Russian hawks in the European firmament, Sikorski said that if Russian attacks then the Euro Nato response will not just be defensive, but “offensive” as well on the program Front Sikorskiego.

Sikorski says he has told Russian officials to "be careful, because we have more combat aircraft than you do. So if you do something that no one wants, we won't just sit back and do nothing. We will respond both defensively and offensively.”

Earlier he predicted that thanks to Europe’s overwhelming superiority in air power, the response would be over “in six days.” But he is not taking any chances.

"I have stocked up on rice, I have a hand pump at home, and I have also made preserves from fruit from my own garden," Sikorski said in the interview with Fakt editor-in-chief Michal Wodzinski, given in New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly.

As IntelliNews reported, the rhetoric runs the danger of Europeans talking themselves into WWIII, as it has been down this road before. Earlier this year, the airwaves were flooded with the “Ukraine has reached a turning point” troupe ahead of the Ankara Nato summit on July 8 where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy went asking for more money and missiles. He got some money, an EU tranche of €6.1bn to partially close a yawning $27bn hole in this year’s defence budget, but precious few missiles, as Ukraine has run out of US-made Patriot interceptor ammo.

And that is a problem. Russia has accelerated its ballistic missile production and built up a large stockpile ahead of what is widely assumed will be a brutal winter campaign that would make some of Ukraine’s larger cities uninhabitable.

If the fighting spills over the border then Poland would find itself in the frontline, defending Europe’s eastern flank. Sikorsky is getting ready for the worst. He said he already knew the official safety instructions and had checked where the nearest shelter to his home was. "Everyone should know how to put on a dressing, because that knowledge comes in useful even in peacetime," he added.

Sikorski's pantry talk backs a government drive, under way since 2025, to get households ready for a crisis as Russian drones stray across Poland's eastern border. And Sikorsky’s hyperbole is not without some justification. Last September a Russian drone incursion saw six (unarmed) reconnaissance drones fly over most of the country until a concerted effort by the Polish air force, with help from Denmark and $1.4bn-worth of air defence missiles managed to bring them down. The Russian drones may have only cost $10,000 a piece and carried no explosives, according to Polish authorities, but underscored how ill-prepared Europe’s forces are to repel a Russian attack.

Not Poland though. It is one of the only Nato countries to be spending close to the 5% of GDP target set by the Trump administration and intends to build the largest conventional army in Europe, while hybrid attacks seem to be already underway.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned parliament on September 17 that intelligence assessments indicated Russia could stage drone or missile attacks against countries supporting Ukraine in the coming months, while Lithuania said it had access to the same intelligence. He added that Moscow may disguise strikes on Nato as accidents a few days after a Russian drone hit a Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train near the Polish border, “by mistake.” A train carrying former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson back from a conference in Kyiv had to be evacuated as it approached the Polish border when a nearby train was struck and destroyed by a Russian drone.

Asked whether Poles should pack an evacuation backpack, Sikorski said citizens had “already received the relevant advice” and should act on it.

"If the state tells a citizen: listen, times are turbulent, it is better to be prepared, then it won't hurt to listen. It is an appeal to listen," he said.

That advice arrived in every Polish letterbox this year. The interior ministry, the defence ministry and the Government Security Centre printed 16mn copies of a 50-page Safety Guide, the Poradnik bezpieczenstwa, for distribution to all households by the end of January.

It tells families to keep at least three days of supplies, including a minimum of 3 litres of water per person per day, and to pack an evacuation backpack with documents, cash, medicines, a torch, a battery radio, a power bank, a sleeping bag, thermal foil and food that needs no cooking. Shelters carry a special symbol, and local councils and the fire service can say where the nearest one is.

The Baltic states have issued similar warnings: Estonia has plans for the evacuation of its entire population to Finland, and Lithuanians and Latvians have been told to escape to Poland. Worryingly, the Belarusian military has been on military exercises this month near the Sulwaki gap, the traditional route Russia is expected to use if it were to invade Europe to take the Baltics and attack Poland.

Sikorski also said the question of how close Russia and Nato are to open conflict was one "only one person knows. This time, Vladimir Putin, because Nato is a purely defensive alliance and we don't want this,” toning down his rhetoric a little from his earlier more belligerent comments the previous week.

Provocations and false-flag operations are "standard" for the Russians, he said, "so we can't fall for it.”

For anyone who skipped the first-aid chapter of the guide: for heavy bleeding, apply a pressure dressing first and, if that fails, a tourniquet above the wound - and write down the time.