(Reuters) – Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko taunted Poland on Tuesday over the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries near the NATO country’s border, stating that Warsaw should be grateful to him for keeping them in check.
A group of Wagner fighters, who staged a brief mutiny in Russia in June, has since relocated to Belarus and has begun training Lukashenko’s army. This development has led Poland to deploy over 1,000 of its own troops closer to the border.
Last month, Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, jokingly informed him during a meeting that some of the fighters were interested in entering Poland and “going on a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszow”.
State news agency Belta quoted Lukashenko on Tuesday, stating that the Poles “should pray that we’re holding onto (the Wagner fighters) and providing for them. Otherwise, without us, they would have seeped through and smashed up Rzeszow and Warsaw in no small way. So they shouldn’t reproach me, they should say thank you.”
Rzeszow is a city in southeast Poland near the Ukrainian border.
Last Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki expressed concern that a group of 100 Wagner fighters had moved closer to the Belarusian city of Grodno, which is near the Polish border, describing the situation as “increasingly dangerous”.
Lukashenko initially appeared to deny this claim in his latest comments but immediately reversed his denial.
He said, “Suddenly, I hear recently, Poland went berserk that allegedly some detachment is coming here, as many as 100 people. No Wagner detachments of 100 people moved here. And if they did, then only to transfer their military experience to (Belarusian) brigades concentrated in Brest and Grodno.”
Lukashenko has assisted Putin in the Ukraine war by permitting him to launch it in part from Belarusian territory and by allowing the use of his bases to train Russian troops. However, Lukashenko has not deployed his own troops to the war, but has stated that they will benefit from training by Wagner, which participated in some of the conflict’s most intense battles.
“I have to teach my military because an army that does not fight is only half an army,” he said.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Credit: The Star : News Feed
