by Marcello Campo (ANSA) - BRUXELLES, AUG 31 - Ursula von der Leyen a stone's throw from the enemy. She with Donald Tusk at her side, speaking a few meters away from the metal barrier several meters high at the Polish, then European, border. And behind them, on the other side of the gate, a Belarusian soldier, also armed. It is the symbolic image, posted and commented on by the two leaders, of the mission that is taking the president of the EU Commission to the seven European countries on the eastern border, organized in the hours after the Russian attack on the EU diplomatic delegation in Kiev on Aug. 28. The goal: to revitalize European defense. "The president saw firsthand the situation at the border. A Belarusian soldier listened carefully to our press conference," Tusk wrote on X. Soon after von der Leyen: "We want a strong Poland and a strong Europe that will safeguard our borders and protect all Europeans. Our message is clear and Belarus and other actors in the region are getting it." A mission that began on Friday in Latvia and Finland, respectively the leading drone-building country and on the front lines defending the seas from Russian ghost fleets. Then Saturday to Estonia, today Poland and Bulgaria, ending tomorrow in Lithuania and Romania. To all these countries the message was always the same: we are with you, your borders are ours, just as the political, financial and military responsibility of having to defend them from Moscow's aggression is common. "Putin has not changed. He can only be kept in check with strong deterrence. We must be precise and quick in increasing our defensive strategy," is his line. But it was here in Krynki, a three-hour drive from Warsaw, that the closeness of the conflict became most apparent. Donald Tusk recounted that shortly before von der Leyen's arrival his security forces had asked him to cancel the press conference or at least to move it elsewhere because Belarusian soldiers with long guns had appeared nearby. "I asked the president what she thought about it and she answered me with the words I wanted to hear and which, for us here in Poland, are obvious: zero concessions. No one will intimidate or disturb us in our home." As for the Russian danger, the Polish premier used very strong words, echoing the days of the Cold War. "The threat in the past came from the Soviet Union, today from Russia, but it has the same character. The war is being fought not far from here, against this new version of the evil empire," he concluded, quoting exactly the expression with which Ronald Reagan defined the USSR in a famous speech in 1983. (ANSA).