The attack came shortly before dawn.

Dozens of illegal migrants on the Belarusian side of the border with Poland hurled a volley of makeshift spears at Polish border guards through the five-metre-high steel fence.

Some fell short of their targets and as the security forces picked them up they saw what appeared to be a tree branch with a steel blade taped to the top.

Several were injured in the bombardment and one - Sgt Mateusz Sitek, a 21-year-old from the village of Nowy Lubiel - lost his life.

They may be incredibly crude but the weapons show a new level of organisation and intent from the waves of migrants arriving at the gates of the EU through Belarus.

They are migrants arriving with the quiet helping hand of Russia, Polish officials believe, the latest axis in Vladimir Putin’s asymmetric hybrid war with the West.

Russia has long waged hybrid warfare on Europe’s doorstep - a combination of cyber attacks and disinformation.

They began weaponising migration three years ago, working with travel agents in the Middle East to encourage migrants to visit with the promise of a gateway to the EU.

As The Telegraph reported earlier this year, these migrants are increasingly controlled by private Wagner-like Russian militias.

The death of Sgt Sitek is emblematic of how things have dramatically escalated.

“He was a very, very good boy,” one person told The Telegraph at his funeral in a small church where friends, family and the Polish president gathered to pay their respects.

The sounds of prayers mingled with footsteps as soldiers walked across St Mary’s wooden floor.

Amid the kind words and reflections, though, one message cut through: this was a needless death.

“You know, I can’t stop thinking, would all this have happened if two years ago these people hadn’t started all this hate campaign against our soldiers on the border?” one mourner at Sitek’s funeral said.

As well as training and controlling increasingly violent migration flows into Poland, Russia has also upped its destabilising techniques elsewhere along its border with Europe.

On the Finnish-Russian border, Russia has been handing out bicycles and foot-scooters to migrants to help them cross over.

The Kremlin’s influence over a number of the main routes into the continent stirred fears earlier this year that Russia would be intensifying its efforts.

Intelligence documents detailed plans for Russian agents to set up a “15,000-man strong border police force” comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants.

In Poland, arguments between migrants and border guards have now turned into full-blown skirmishes, including the latest that has ended with a fatality.

“We took an oath to defend our country with the sacrifice of our lives,” said Colonel Katarzyna Zdanowicz, spokesman for the Border Patrol.

“But no one expected it to be like this. After the death of this young soldier, we understood how realistic our oath was.”

Pawel Zabrocki, chief of police in the nearby town of Hajnowka, said since April this year, his team of 370 police officers have stopped at least 537 people trying to cross the border illegally.

The tensions at the border are also bleeding deeper into nearby communities.

Czerlonka is a tiny village of about a dozen houses buried deep in the forest of Bialowieza, five miles from the border.

Surrounded by treacherous swamps, it is the first point from the border where forest meets tarmac and where a bus service runs.

This obscure little spot became the subject of media attention after residents complained they would see migrants hanging around the bus stop, having trekked through the forest.

Zbigniew Czerewko, 70, is a retired forestry worker who has lived in Czerlonka for more than 40 years.

One day he was visited by a young man who came to his house and asked for food and water.

“We gave him scrambled eggs because he didn’t want sausages, and we charged his mobile phone. My son-in-law spoke to him in English. The man said he was 23 years old and had come from Egypt. He was hiding in the forest from the border patrol.”

The man was pleasant enough, said Mr Czerewko, as are many of the other migrants he has met. But the fact that people don’t know exactly who they are or where they have come from has led to fears and all sorts of rumours. One of those is that members of the Russian mercenary group, Wagner, are also at the border.

“The local people are afraid. They are afraid because they do not know what to expect from those who come here.”

It was a message underscored by resident Anna Berent at a recent regional government meeting in Bialowieza.

“Our village has become a stopping point between the border and the refugee centre. These people, hungry and tired, occupy our houses and spread fear among us.

“We are not afraid of migrants because they have a different skin colour or a different faith. We fear unknown people who have entered our country illegally, taking our peace and our property,” she said, adding that some are armed with weapons.

Poland on Wednesday said it would do whatever it took to resolve the migrant crisis on its border with Belarus.

Radoslaw Sikorski, the foreign minister, had previously said that Poland did not rule out a complete closure of the border, while Andrzej Duda, the president, raised the border crisis in talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, a growing ally of Russia.

“We are ready for any solution in this area because we will not allow this migration crisis caused by Belarus to last indefinitely,” said Cezary Tomczyk, the deputy defence minister.

The warning on migration came as Poland’s armed forces chief also on Wednesday said the country needed to prepare its soldiers.

“Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” General Wieslaw Kukula told a press conference.

“This forces us to find a good balance between the border mission and maintaining the intensity of training in the army,” he said.

Speaking at the same event, Pawel Bejda, the deputy defence minister, said that as of August, the number of troops guarding Poland’s eastern border would be increased to 8,000 from the current 6,000, with an additional rearguard of 9,000 able to step up within 48 hours notice.