Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said during a speech on Thursday at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, DC, that if Ukraine is defeated in its war with Russia, China may decide to invade Taiwan shortly after.

“On April 13, a Polish government official … openly compared the issues of Taiwan and Ukraine, and made the unsubstantiated claim that if Ukraine loses the war, mainland China will attack Taiwan the next day,” the spokesman of the Chinese embassy in Warsaw said in a statement.

“Any attempt to use the Ukraine issue as a pretext to insinuate a relationship with the Taiwan issue is political manipulation with ulterior motives, mindless trampling on the principle of respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and flagrant interference in China’s internal affairs,” the statement said.

Stanislaw Zaryn, a spokesman for the Polish security services, said China was trying to force Poland to “adopt Chinese optics regarding Taiwan.”

“The attack by Chinese propaganda on the Polish prime minister, the style of operation of the PRC embassy in Warsaw and the way Beijing conducts its policy indicates that the Sino-Russian tactical alliance is covering more and more areas of joint action,” he wrote on Twitter.

China in recent days has held intense military drills around Taiwan, which it claims as its own, and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

Poland reacted strongly to comments from French president Emmanuel Macron, who visited China last week. Macron said that the European Union should reduce its dependence on the US and aim to become a “third pole” in world affairs alongside Washington and Beijing.

Both President Andrzej Duda and Morawiecki have stressed in recent days that the alliance with the US is essential for European security, cautioning against any idea of “strategic autonomy” for Europe.