2023-07-29 19:55:00
Tension is rising on the border between Poland and Belarus. While Poland last week sent more than 1,000 soldiers to the border after the arrival of Russian Wagner militia forces in Belarus, 5 kilometers from Poland, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced on Saturday that a hundred of Wagner’s mercenaries had approached the Belarusian city of Grodno, near the Polish and Lithuanian borders.
“The situation is becoming more and more dangerous (…) It is very likely that they (Wagner’s militiamen) will disguise themselves as Belarusian border guards and help illegal migrants to enter Polish territory (and) in order to destabilize Poland,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference in Gliwice, western Poland.
“They will most likely try to enter Poland pretending to be illegal migrants, which poses an additional threat,” he added, as Poland hosts many Belarusian migrants as evidenced by the many vehicles with license plates. in Belarus visible in Warsaw.
A former member of the Warsaw Pact and a full member of the NATO military alliance since 1999, Poland has been concerned about the possible spread of war on its territory since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Anton Motolko, founder of the Belarusian opposition Hajun Project, which monitors military activities in the country, nevertheless told Archyde.com that his group had seen no evidence that the Wagner Group was moving closer to Grodno. The city occupies a strategic position since it is close to the Suwalki gap, a strip of land located along the border between Poland and Lithuania, which separates Belarus, an ally of Russia, from the enclave Kaliningrad Russian.
Warsaw and Vilnius consider closing their borders
These statements by the Polish Prime Minister come the day after those of Poland and Lithuania assuring that they were considering the possibility of closing their border with Belarus in the event of provocations from Wagner, who sowed a wind of concern in the region since the Minsk regime welcomed them to its soil after their revolt in Russia.
“These considerations are real. The possibility of closing the border exists,” Lithuanian Deputy Minister Arnoldas Abramavicius told reporters on Friday.
Lithuania and Poland have repeatedly warned their NATO allies that Wagner’s mercenaries could pose as asylum seekers in an attempt to cross the border between Belarus and the EU.
“It could be groups of refugees, irregularly transferred migrants with the aim of causing some kind of trouble” at the border, said Arnoldas Abramavicius.
For his part, referring to the presence of members of the Wagner group in Belarus on Friday, the leader of the populist nationalist party in power in Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, estimated that they were there “to provoke various crises directed mainly against Poland”.
According to him, Poland “is preparing, developing the defense system, so that these provocations fail”.
The day before, Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said that “if we find such an adequate response we will lead to the total isolation of Belarus and the Belarusian regime must take this into account”. Already, even regular traffic on this border is extremely limited by the reciprocal sanctions imposed by Warsaw and Minsk.
“Wagner wants to go West”
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko assured Vladimir Putin last weekend to “keep” Wagner in the center of his country.
“They are asking to ‘go west’ (…) to Warsaw, Rzeszów”, in Poland, had then launched Alexander Lukashenko about Wagner’s fighters.
Poland and Lithuania have for two years built barriers along their borders with Belarus and Russia, accusing these two countries of encouraging migrants wishing to reach the EU to try their luck.
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