A Polish flag on a memorial commemorating the thousands of Poles killed by the Soviet Union was removed by Russian authorities amid increasing tensions between Moscow and Warsaw over the Ukraine conflict.

The removal of the flag from the Katyn memorial in western Russia was confirmed by the mayor of Smolensk city.

“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.

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“The culture ministry of the Russian Federation made the right decision by removing the Polish flag. Katyn is a Russian memorial.”

According to a report released by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, almost all Poles say they see Russia as a major threat.

Some 97 percent of residents of Poland also say they have little or no confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin “to do the right thing regarding world affairs.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth month, has accelerated a dramatic shift in attitudes in Poland.

“That’s incredibly rare to get that kind of unified public opinion on one issue,” Jacob Poushter, associate director of global attitudes research at Pew, told Foreign Policy. “And in this case, it’s just very clear that people in Poland are very wary of Russia.”

In May, tensions increased between Moscow and Warsaw when a video of Chechen leader and Putin’s ally Ramzan Kadyrov went viral on social media where he is seen threatening Poland.

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In the video posted on Twitter, Kadyrov was seen saying that the “issue of Ukraine is closed” and that Poland is next.

In the subtitles, he can be seen saying, “After Ukraine, if we’re given the command, in six seconds we’ll show you what we’re capable of.”

Poland has supplied Ukraine with a number of weapons to defend itself against the Russian invasion.