Fighters of the Wagner mercenary group are being commanded into Belarus consistently since the failed mutiny against Moscow. Many of these fighters might be assisting illegal migrants and even pose as them to destabilize the situation on the Polish border, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has warned.
According to reports of various news agencies, about 100 Wagner troops have moved near the city of Grodno, Belarus, close to the Polish and Lithuanian borders. Warsaw sees Wagner in Belarus as a potential threat.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has previously denied provoking a migrant crisis in Europe by luring would-be migrants to its borders with EU nations.
But Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday that more than 100 members of the Wagner group had moved to north-western Belarus near the Suwalki gap – Poland’s border with European Union member state Lithuania, which separates Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
He claimed the mercenaries might pose as Belarusian border guards in order to help migrants cross into the EU, or even pretend to be migrants themselves to enter the bloc.
While on a visit to an arms factory in Gliwice, southern Poland, Morawiecki told reporters the situation is becoming even more dangerous, painting a very grim picture.
“This is certainly a step towards a further hybrid attack on Polish territory,” he added. Belarus has been accused earlier of preparing to wage a hybrid war against Poland in November last year when thousands of migrants were stuck on the European Union’s eastern frontier.
The European Union blamed Minsk for creating the crisis by distributing Belarusian visas in the Middle East, flying the migrants in and pushing them across the border.
On Thursday Poland’s interior minister said Poland, Lithuania and Latvia could jointly decide to shut their borders with Belarus if there were incidents involving the Wagner group along their frontiers.