Vladimir Putin has hit out at Poland, repeating unsubstantiated claims that it is “hatching revanchist plans” to take territory from Ukraine. In a revisionist presentation of history, he also declared that Poles must be “reminded” that their western territories were a “gift from Stalin”.
And the Russian president warned, following recent tensions on the Polish-Belarus border, that any aggression against Belarus will be treated as aggression against Russia, which would respond “with all the means at our disposal”.
Wagner mercenaries who recently arrived in Belarus are holding training exercises this week with Belarusian special forces near the border with Poland.
Warsaw says it is monitoring the situation but that there is no need for “panic” https://t.co/4Ab1Vcdpd2
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 20, 2023
Putin’s remarks came during a call with members of his security council. At the meeting, Sergey Naryshkin, the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, suggested that Poland has “dangerous plans” to “deploy troops in the western territories of Ukraine”.
Soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Poland suggested that an international peacekeeping mission could be used to protect unoccupied parts of Ukraine. However, the idea was rejected by Volodymyr Zelensky and not pursued any further.
Russian propaganda has long claimed that Poland has ambitions to take control of western parts of Ukraine and Belarus, which before World War Two were part of the Polish state. However, no Polish officials have expressed such an aim nor taken any action to achieve it.
Russia's unsubstantiated claims that Poland wants to annex western Ukraine are intended, "in the Kremlin’s twisted logic", to convince people that "Ukraine is an artificial construct and only Russia can now ensure the inviolability of its borders" https://t.co/98mEwsQndO
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 8, 2022
In response to Naryshkin’s remarks, Putin said that he agreed with the intelligence chief’s concerns. “If Polish units enter, for example, Lviv or other territories of Ukraine, then they will remain there. And they will remain forever,” he said.
“This, by the way, is nothing new,” added Putin, who pointed to Polish actions after the First World War. Poland “took advantage” of the Russian civil war to “annex some historical Russian provinces” and also took control of Lviv and parts of Lithuania, said Putin.
“Severe Polonisation” policies were carried out in these territories by Poland, which “suppressed national cultures and Orthodox [Christianity]”, he continued. Russia has long used tensions between Poland and Ukraine over this historical period to stir animosity between the two.
In an important symbolic moment, the presidents of Ukraine and Poland have jointly marked the anniversary of the WWII Volhynia massacres, in which Ukrainians killed up to 100,000 Poles.
The issue has often caused tension between two otherwise close allies https://t.co/nwJOJU6A6y
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 9, 2023
Putin then repeated his previous revisionist historical claims that it was Poland’s “aggressive policy” in the interwar period that resulted in the Nazi-German invasion of 1939. Poland’s “independence and statehood was restored [in 1945] to a large extent thanks to the Soviet Union”, he added.
In fact, in September 1939 Poland was invaded by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which had previously secretly agreed to divide the country up between themselves. The Red Army did later drive Germany out of Poland, but that ushered in decades of brutal Soviet-imposed communist rule.
Putin then added that it is necessary to “remind our friends in Warsaw” how, at the end of the war, it was “thanks to the Soviet Union” that Poland received former German lands. “The western territories of present-day Poland are a gift from Stalin to the Poles.”
Poland did indeed receive former German lands in the west. However, it lost an even greater amount of land in the east, which was transferred to the Soviet Union.
"The Western territories of today's Poland are a gift of Stalin to the Poles. Our friends in Warsaw forgot about it, we'll remind them." – Putin.
And he seems to have forgotten what Stalin did to Poland previously. pic.twitter.com/5lLH2tpWSK
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) July 21, 2023
Putin then suggested that the current “traitors” ruling Ukraine are planning to give Poland back some of its former lands in return for military support against Russia. There is no evidence of such a plan and nor has any official in Poland or Ukraine expressed support for one.
The Russian president added that any such arrangement is not Russia’s business. But he warned that “aggression against Belarus will mean aggression against the Russian Federation [and] we will respond to this with all the means at our disposal”.
Recent weeks have seen an escalation in tensions at the Polish-Belarusian border, where Poland has boosted security in response to the arrival of Wagner Group mercenaries in Belarus following their short-lived rebellion in Russia.
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Main image credit: kremlin.ru (under CC BY 4.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
