EUROPEAN Council chief Donald Tusk attacked opponents of the European Union as “today’s Bolsheviks” at the weekend.

Mr Tusk, a former Polish prime minister from the centre-right Civic Platform party whose appointment to the senior EU role was bitterly opposed by Poland’s current Law and Justice government, spoke in Lodz to mark 100 years since Polish independence at the end of the first world war.

He praised Polish nationalist leader Joseph Pilsudski for “conquering the Bolsheviks” — Poland fought against the Red Army in 1920 — and in the process “defending the Western community against political barbarians.” He also saluted Polish Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa, who fought against Poland’s socialist government in the 1980s, for “conquering the Bolsheviks in a symbolic way.