Wagner mercenaries who recently relocated to Belarus and have been training with the country’s armed forces want to infiltrate neighboring Poland, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko warned Sunday.
“The Wagner guys have started to stress us. They want to go west. ‘Let’s go on a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszow,’” Lukashenko said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, according to the Polish Press Agency.
After conducting a failed mutiny in Russia late last month, Wagner mercenaries relocated to Belarus as part of a deal with Putin and Lukashenko to end the revolt. Since relocating, the Wagner fighters have been conducting training sessions with Belarusian troops just six miles from the border with Poland, raising concerns about the Wagner Group’s potential to lash out against Warsaw.
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Officials in Poland have been ringing alarm bells about potential aggression from Wagner mercenaries ever since the deal was reached, placing Wagner fighters in Poland’s backyard.
European officials have also raised concerns about Wagner fighters’ new staging ground as a potential threat to the European Union as a whole, according to a report from the European Parliament released last week.
Poland has responded to the possible threat by moving troops and police towards the border with Belarus as a defensive mechanism.
Zbigniew Hoffmann, the secretary of Poland's National Security Committee, said the movement of troops is warranted to respond to the recent exercises in Belarus, which he characterized as a “provocation.”
The weekend meeting was likely aimed at provoking Poland, according to Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Pawel Jablonski.
“We are basically sure today… that in a situation of particularly high political tension… the number of provocations is increasing,” Jablonski said.
Putin has seized the moment to accuse Poland of plotting to take Belarusian territory. Putin warned Poland against “dreaming of Belarusian lands,” claiming that an attack on Belarus would be considered an attack on Russia proper as well.
“Unleashing aggression against Belarus would mean aggression against the Russian Federation,” Putin said Friday.
Belarus and Russia form what is known as a “union state,” in which both governments work to draw their economies, militaries, and cultures closer and closer together. The U.S. State Department has assessed in recent months that the line between where Putin’s power ends and where Lukashenko’s power begins has grown thinner and thinner.
For over a year now, Lukashenko has allowed Russian troops to use Belarus as a staging ground for conducting war in Ukraine. Belarusian opposition politicians believe that Russia’s use of Belarusian territory for the war constitutes a hybrid occupation of Belarus itself, as previously reported by The Daily Beast.
In an apparent threat against Warsaw, Putin recently said that some western territories of Poland were a gift from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin at the close of World War II.
The comments have raised questions about whether Russia is working to create an excuse to attack Poland.
Poland’s deputy foreign minister characterized Putin’s remarks as confirmation that Russia has hostile intentions towards not just Ukraine, but all of Europe.
Tensions between Russia and Poland have gone south in recent days: Putin has warned the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) about a potential plan by Warsaw to allegedly occupy Western Ukraine and take “a good chunk” out of the country.
“Poland’s leaders likely seek to set up a coalition under the NATO umbrella and directly join the conflict in Ukraine and ’tear off’ a wider piece for themselves, restore their, as they believe, historical territory—today’s western Ukraine,” he said.
Following Putin’s comments, Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Russian ambassador to Poland, according to Jablonski. The meeting was “very brief,” Jablonski said, according to the Polish Press Agency.
