The Polish prime minister said it was likely that Wagner operatives would “try to enter Poland posing as illegal immigrants.”
Posted on: July 29, 2023: 09:12 PM GST Last updated: July 29, 2023: 10:04 PM GST
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday that a group of 100 fighters from Russia’s special military Wagner has approached the city of Grodno in Belarus near the Polish border.
Poland is concerned about the possibility of the war spreading to its territory since its outbreak in Ukraine in February 2022. Poland is a former member of the Warsaw Pact, and it has been a full member of NATO since 1999.
Earlier this month, Poland began transferring more than 1,000 soldiers to its east, amid rising fears that the presence of Wagner fighters in Belarus would increase tensions on its borders.
Polish border guards on the border with Belarus (archive)
“The situation is getting more dangerous,” Morawiecki said at a press conference in Gliwice, western Poland. “They (Wagner personnel) will most likely disguise themselves as Belarusian border guards and help illegal immigrants enter Polish territory and destabilize Poland.”
He added: “It is likely that they will try to enter Poland pretending to be illegal immigrants and this poses additional threats.”
But he did not disclose the source of his information about Wagner’s movements. Anton Motolko, founder of the Hagun opposition project in Belarus that monitors military activity in the country, told Reuters his group had not seen any evidence of Wagner approaching Grodno.
The city has an important location due to its proximity to the Sowaki Gap, a corridor on the Polish-Lithuanian border that separates Belarus, Moscow’s ally, from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, located outside Russia’s territory.
#Poland #Wagners #mercenaries #Belarus #approaching #borders
2023-07-29 17:12:00
