Putin tells Poland that any aggression against Belarus is an attack against Russia

MOSCOW, July 21 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin accused NATO member Poland on Friday of having territorial ambitions in the former Soviet Union, saying any aggression against Russia’s neighbor and close ally Belarus would be seen as an attack against Russia.

Moscow would react to any aggression against Belarus, which forms a flexible “Union State” with Russia, “with all the means at our disposal,” Putin said at a meeting of his Security Council in televised remarks.

The Warsaw Security Committee decided on Wednesday to transfer military units east of poland after members of the Russian Wagner mercenary force arrived in Belarus, state news agency PAP quoted its secretary as saying on Friday.

Poland denies any territorial ambitions in Belarus.

In his remarks, Putin also claimed that the western part of Poland was a gift from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to the country and that Russia would remind the Poles of it.

In an apparent reference to that, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted late Friday that “Stalin was a war criminal, guilty of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Poles. The historical truth is not debatable.”

“The ambassador of the Russian Federation will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he said.

On Thursday, Belarus said that Wagner’s mercenaries had begun to train Belarusian special forces at a military site a few kilometers from the Polish border.

RUSSIA STAGES TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Russia has begun in recent weeks to bet nuclear weapons in Belarus for the first time. The Kremlin said Putin would meet in Russia on Sunday with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, with whom he speaks regularly.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Friday that Germany and NATO were prepared to support Poland in defending the military alliance’s eastern flank.

Putin said there were press reports about plans to use a Polish-Lithuanian unit for operations in western Ukraine – parts of which in the past belonged to Poland – and ultimately to occupy territory there.

“It is well known that they also dream of the Belarusian lands,” he said, also without providing evidence.

On Wednesday, Wagner’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was shown in a video welcoming his fighters to Belarus, telling them they would no longer participate in the war in Ukraine for now, but ordering them to gather forces for Wagner’s operations in Africa while they trained the Belarusian army.

Prigozhin says that Wagner, who led the conquest of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, is Russia’s most effective fighting force. But his frequent clashes with Moscow’s defense establishment led him to stage an armed mutiny four weeks ago.

The insurrection ended with an agreement whereby Wagner’s fighters, many recruited from prison, could move to Belarus if they so wished.

Information from Reuters; Written by Kevin Liffey; Edited by William Maclean and Grant McCool

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