Pro-Putin Bikers Anger Poland With Plan to Ride to Berlin

A Russian biker gang backed by President Vladimir Putin is planning to ride through Europe to celebrate the Soviet Union's role in World War II victory over Nazi Germany, sparking anger in Poland.

A two-week, 6,000-kilometre (3,728-mile) rally by Russian bikers including the Night Wolves, a fiercely nationalistic motorcycle club, will pass through Belarus, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and end in Berlin on May 9.

"To Berlin!" says the biker gang's website dedicated to the rally, an allusion to the Red Army's famous WWII battle cry.

The commemorative rally comes amid huge tensions between Russia and the West over the crisis in Ukraine. The Polish foreign ministry has dubbed the upcoming rally a "problem."

But Russian bikers insist that their journey is not politically motivated.

"This is a memorial rally," Andrei Bobrovsky, the organiser of the rally, which is set to begin on April 25, told AFP.

"The main goal is to pay respects to those killed on WWII battlefields in the struggle against Hitler's Nazis -- soldiers and innocent civilians," he said.

"Another goal is to develop and strengthen good neighbourly ties."

During their journey the bikers will visit war memorials, Auschwitz and Dachau death camps and Berlin's Treptower Park famous for its Soviet war memorial.

Bobrovsky said many Europeans wanted to join the rally including Germans.

The Russian ride however caused a major stir in Poland, one of the fiercest backers of the pro-Western government in Ukraine.

A Polish Facebook page, dubbed "No to the passage of Russian bandits through Poland", calls on the authorities to ban the Russians from the EU.

Jarek Podworski, a biker from Lublin in Poland who helped set up the Facebook page, said that it was "unimaginable" for bikers who have supported pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine to ride through EU countries.

"We know very well what they are doing in Ukraine," Podworski told AFP.

"Brandishing Russian flags, they want to trace the footsteps of the Red Army which in reality did not bring freedom to Poland."

"The Russians are testing the limits of their expansion. If they pass, there is a risk that in three years they will come for good."

He called on Poles to disrupt the rally by blocking the roads.

The Polish foreign ministry said it was "watching the problem."

The Night Wolves, who are sometimes seen as Russia's answer to Hell's Angels of the US, count Putin among their top fans.

The Russian strongman famously rode a Harley-Davidson trike at a bikers' get-together in Crimea in 2010.