POLAND has sent troops to their border with Belarus to face off the growing threat of Wagner forces amassing on the Nato nation’s eastern flank.
Vladimir Putin responded to the military move with a chilling Stalin-style threat that promised to “remind them” of their place using “all the means at our disposal”.
Poland’s Security Committee decided to transfer troops to the border over concerns of the build up of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary army.
The move was prompted by Belarus’ decision on Thursday to hold the joint drills between their special forces and Wagner troops only three miles from the Nato perimeter.
Zbigniew Hoffmann, secretary of the committee, said the exercises are “undoubtedly a provocation”.
Polish residents near the border region reported hearing shooting and helicopters.
The Nato nation’s troop redeployment struck a chord with an President Putin who launched a spitting rebuttal that evoked the brutal Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
On Russian state TV he spat the threat: “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.”
In a later meeting with the security council, he added: “Unleashing aggression against Belarus will mean aggression against the Russian Federation.”
He warned that Moscow will respond “with all the means at our disposal” – only weeks after Russia began transferring nuclear warheads to its neighbour.
Almost in the same breath, he bizarrely accused Poland of having territorial ambitions in the former Soviet Union.
The rambling autocrat claimed that a Polish-Lithuanian unit had plans to intervene in Ukraine “in order to then tear off a bigger piece for themselves”.
“It is well known that they also dream of the Belarusian lands,” he added, also without providing any evidence.
Following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s botched rebellion in Russia, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko invited Wagner forces to move into his nation to help train his military.
In the past week, streams of troops and equipment have crossed the border and set up camp in abandoned military bases.
On Wednesday, Wagner chief Prigozhin finally broke cover and appeared in Belarus to welcome his paid-killers to their new homes after weeks of uncertainty over his whereabouts.
“Welcome lads… welcome to Belarusian soil,” Putin’s former lap dog yelled in the grainy video shot at dusk.
During his speech, he rallied his troops and promised they would not fight in Ukraine again after he branded the war a “disgrace”.
“Therefore a decision was taken for us to station here in Belarus for some time.
“I am sure that during this time we will make the Belarusian army second greatest in the world,” he added.
The footage came just days after Russia threatened to use Wagner fighters to invade Nato’s “weakest link” in Poland and Lithuania.
In a move that would likely trigger World War Three, a top Russian politician claimed that the hired guns were ready to strike in “a matter of hours” from Belarus.
On Friday, German defence minister Boris Pistorius announced that Gemany and Nato are prepared to support Poland in defending its eastern flank.
“Where the Polish partners need support, they will receive it…We are prepared,” he said.
