Putin warns Poland: its western territories were "a gift from Stalin"

The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has asserted this Friday that the western territories of present-day Poland were “a gift from Stalin” and has warned that if Warsaw has forgotten this fact, Moscow “will remind it”.

After the announcement of the deployment of Polish troops towards the Belarusian border, Putin has launched a threatening speech at Warsaw in which he has stressed that Belarus is part of the State of the Union, a supranational alliance made up only of both countries. “Unleashing an aggression against Belarus will mean an aggression against the Russian Federation. We will respond to it with all the means at our disposal,” the Russian president said during a meeting of the National Security Council.

Warsaw has announced the deployment of troops on the border with Belarus in response to the presence of mercenaries from the Wagner Group in this country. The paramilitaries also instruct the Belarusian Armed Forces in combat training.

On the other hand, the Russian leader has warned that Poland could be planning to send a joint military unit with Lithuania to western Ukraine headed for Lviv, a city that hosted international legations during the early stages of the war.

“We are not talking about a ragtag group of mercenaries, there are already enough of them there and they are being destroyed, but about a regular, well-oiled and well-equipped military formation that is planned to be used for operations on the territory of Ukraine,” he said.

“They will stay there forever”

According to the Russian president, this operation would be aimed at “guaranteeing the security of Ukraine”, although he has warned that they would ultimately end up occupying these territories, according to information collected by the Russian agency TASS.

“If Polish units enter Lviv, for example, or some other Ukrainian territory, they will stay there.. And they will stay there forever,” said Putin, who, looking back again, pointed out that Poland already occupied this area after the First World War.

“Poland took advantage of the tragedy of the Russian Civil War to annex some historically Russian provinces. Our country, which was going through a difficult period at the time, was forced to sign the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and to recognize 'de facto' the alienation of its own territories,” he concluded.