Putin: Any attack on Belarus will be considered an attack on Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Poland, a member of NATO, of having ambitions in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and said that any attack on Belarus, Moscow’s ally and neighbor, would be considered an attack on Russia.
Putin said, in remarks during a meeting of the Russian Security Council, broadcast on television on Friday, that Moscow would respond “with all the means it has” to any aggression against Belarus, which forms a loose “union state” with Russia.
The official news agency in Warsaw quoted the secretary of the Warsaw Security Committee as saying, on Friday, that the committee decided on Wednesday to transfer military units to eastern Poland, after members of the Russian private military Wagner Group arrived in Belarus.
Poland denies any territorial ambitions in Belarus.
In his remarks, Putin also said that the western part of Poland was a gift from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to the country, and that Russia reminds the Poles of that.
In what appeared to be a response to what Putin said, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote, Friday evening, on Twitter, saying: “Stalin was a war criminal, carrying the burden of killing hundreds of thousands of Poles. An indisputable historical fact.”
“The ambassador of the Russian Federation will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he added.
Belarus said Thursday that Wagner fighters had begun training the country’s special forces in a military district a few miles from the border with Poland.
In recent weeks, Russia has begun deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus for the first time. The Kremlin said Putin would meet President Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Friday that Germany and NATO were ready to support Poland in defending the eastern flank of the alliance.
Putin said there were press reports of plans to use a Polish-Lithuanian unit in operations in western Ukraine to eventually occupy territory there. “It is known that they also dream about the lands of Belarus,” he said, but did not provide evidence of this.
Wagner’s commander, Yevgeny Prigozhin, appeared in a video on Wednesday welcoming his fighters to Belarus, telling them they would not take part in the war in Ukraine for now, but ordering them to mobilize for operations in Africa, as well as training the Belarusian army.
Prigozhin says that Wagner, who led the grinding battle of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, is Russia’s most effective fighting force. But the repeated clashes between him and the Russian defense establishment pushed him to an armed rebellion four weeks ago.
The rebellion ended with an agreement to transfer Wagner fighters, many of whom were recruited from prisons, to Belarus if they wanted to.
(Reuters)
#Putin #attack #Belarus #considered #attack #Russia
2023-07-21 22:18:08
