Putin: If Polish troops enter Ukrainian Lviv, they will stay there forever

(Patria) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said that if Polish units enter Lviv or other territories in Ukraine, they will stay there "forever", Tass reported.

"There may be plans to use the planned Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian joint military unit as an occupation force in the territories of western Ukraine, and all Polish forces that enter Lviv will certainly stay there," the Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a working meeting of the Security Council.

"I cannot help but comment on what the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin just said and the press reports that have appeared about plans to create a so-called Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian unit. We are not talking here about some motley crew of mercenaries – there are already enough of them, quite a few have been destroyed, but about an equipped military formation that is planned to be used for operations on the territory of Ukraine," Putin said.

According to Putin, "this will not represent anything new," adding that after the defeat of Germany and other Central Powers in World War I, Polish units occupied Lviv and neighboring lands, which were then part of Austria-Hungary.

"Encouraged by the West, Poland took advantage of the tragedy of the Russian Civil War to annex certain 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 de facto recognize the alienation of its territories," Putin said.

"Together with the Lithuanians, they (the Poles) allegedly fought against so-called Russian imperialism, but as soon as the opportunity presented itself, they immediately 'cut off' a piece of land from their neighbor," Putin said. He further stated that "Poland also participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia as a result of the Munich Agreement with Hitler in 1938," completely occupying Cieszyn Silesia.

"In the 1920s and 1930s, the so-called Kresy Wschodnie from Poland ('Eastern Borderlands' in Polish), and this includes the territory of western Ukraine, western Belarus, and part of Lithuania, were subjected to a harsh policy of Polonization and forced assimilation of the local population, suppression of ethnic cultures and Orthodox Christianity," Putin said.

He said that such an aggressive policy for Poland ended with the loss of national independence and statehood in 1939, which were later restored "largely thanks to the Soviet Union." Moreover, "the western territories of today's Poland were Stalin's gift to the Poles. Have our friends in Warsaw forgotten this? We will remind them," Putin added.