Tensions between Russia and NATO member Poland have been cranking up to boiling point in recent days amid Russian claims that it has killed 'up to 80 Polish mercenaries' in missile strikes.
The reported losses come on the same day that Russia confirmed it has removed a Polish flag from a memorial commemorating the murder of thousands of Poles by the Soviet Union in 1940.
To the north, Moscow has been furious over Lithuania's blocking of EU-sanctioned goods from reaching the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between the Baltic state and Poland.
This has prompted Poland to call on NATO to further bolster its security presence in the Suwalki Gap, the narrow corridor of territory that connects the three Baltic states to the rest of their NATO allies and separates Kaliningrad from Russian ally Belarus.
'We are going to seek the reinforcement of this corridor...

in our talks with our partners from NATO,' Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference in Brussels after a European Union summit. 
Kaliningrad and the Suwalki Gap, on Polish territory, would be ground zero for any military conflict between NATO and Russia, as Vladimir Putin would immediately move to cut the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia off from the rest of NATO and shore up the isolated exclave from inevitable NATO strikes.










Freight cars stand on the railroad tracks of the freight station in Kaliningrad on Tuesday after Lithuania enforced a blockade against EU-sanctioned goods crossing its territory from Belarus to Kaliningrad





Ukrainian forces in retreat from Severdonetsk in face of...









Poland fully endorsed Lithuania's blockade of Russian materials to its Baltic exclave and raulluna.com it has been reported that Russian Railways has temporarily suspended some cargo transit from Belarus to Poland.
Russia is framing this as a routine disruption but the timing of it gives the appearance of a tit-for-tat retaliation.
And Estonia's military said in a statement Tuesday that a Russian MI-8 helicopter entered the country's airspace in southeastern Estonia in the Koidula area - not far from the Russian city of Pskov - without permission on Saturday evening and simulated missile attacks.
The helicopter was in Estonia's airspace for almost two minutes, Estonia's military said, adding that it hadn't presented a flight plan, had its transponder switched off and failed to maintain radio contact with Estonian Air Navigation Services.
The alleged intrusion was one of multiple violations of Estonia's airspace this year and comes less than a week before a scheduled NATO summit in Madrid. 
And to escalate tensions between the two historical enemies even further, Russian authorities have removed a Polish flag from a memorial commemorating the murder of thousands of Poles by the Soviet Union.





The names of the people killed on a wall in the Katyn Memorial near Smolensk, Russia, 02 August 2013.

During WWII, more than 4,000 Polish intelligence officers and their relatives were executed in Katyn. In total, about 24,000 Polish people were killed






A Polish girl scout carries a candle she accepted from mourners to lay it outside the Presidential Palace in memory of late Polish President Lech Kaczynski on April 12, 2010 in Warsaw





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Pictured: An outpouring of grief at the gate of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on April 10 2010, after news spread of the tragic crash of the presidential plane near Smolensk airport earlier in the day

Historians and visitors to the Katyn memorial in western Russia's Smolensk region noted the flag's disappearance on social media on Friday.
The mayor of Smolensk city confirmed the removal on Friday evening, publishing a photo showing the Russian flag flying alone at the memorial's entrance.
'There cannot be Polish flags on Russian monuments.

Even less so after the frankly anti-Russian comments by Polish political leaders,' Andrei Borisov said on social media platform VKontakte.
'The culture ministry of the Russian Federation made the right decision by removing the Polish flag.
Katyn is a Russian memorial.'
The Katyn memorial was erected in memory of the 25,000 Poles, mostly army officers deemed anti-communist, massacred by the Soviet Union's political police in a forest near Smolensk in 1940 on the orders of Joseph Stalin.
The Soviet Union had long denied responsibility for the killings, accusing the Nazis of the crime, before admitting the truth in 1990.
The episode poisoned already hostile relations between Russia and Poland.
In 2010, a Smolensk-bound plane carrying the Polish president crashed on the way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, killing all its 96 passengers including most of the Polish government. 
The investigation into the incident sparked a plethora of conspiracy theories and became another source of tension after the countries tried to improve their ties.