A long-term rearmament of Europe, in which the UK can play the closest possible role, is necessary to defeat Russian imperial ambitions, Poland’s foreign minister has said, Ednews reports via The Guardian.

Radosław Sikorski also called for majority voting for EU sanctions and a 5,000-strong EU mechanised brigade, and said Poland was willing to back an EU-wide scheme to incentivise Ukrainian draft dodgers to return to their homeland.

In an interview with the Guardian, Sikorski said Poland backed the right of Ukraine to strike at military targets inside Russia, arguing that the west had to stop constantly limiting itself in what it does to support Ukraine. The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has been holding out against Ukraine using US weapons on Russian territory.

Sikorski, educated at the University of Oxford alongside David Cameron, was in London for a bilateral meeting with the foreign secretary. Sikorski has been a critical figure in taking Poland back to the mainstream of European foreign policy since elections last October led to a new coalition government and an end to eight years of rule by the rightwing nationalist Law and Justice party.

He had just come from a meeting in Berlin with the foreign ministers of France and Germany in the so-called Weimar triangle format, a grouping now seen as the new political powerhouse of the EU.