While many leaders compare the wildfire crisis to the second world war, governments fail to adopt the real lessons of pre-emptive wartime action

As France and Spain battle historic wildfires, comparisons to the second world war abound. “One of the continent’s biggest evacuation efforts since World War II,” reports the Associated Press. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has called the wildfires his country’s “most difficult situation since the second world war”.

The images crossing all our screens certainly feel war-like – emergency aircraft and black smoke fill the skies, frantic civilians seeking shelter, historic towns lying in ruins, charred forests and burned-out vehicles, exhausted and sweat-soaked emergency responders.

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© Photograph: Alexandros Beltes/EPA

© Photograph: Alexandros Beltes/EPA

© Photograph: Alexandros Beltes/EPA

Ukrainian President says Ukraine has hit two more oil facilities deep inside Russia

© Volodymyr Zelensky/X

The drone incident was framed as the latest in a series of hybrid attacks across Europe

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A brutal summer has exposed how much pressure European countries are under from forces largely out of their grip: war in Iran and Ukraine, record heat and more.

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Lithuania also fears Putin may be planning a ‘false flag’ strike on the Baltics

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