The Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko today mocked Poland, which is a member of NATO, in relation to the presence of the mercenaries of the Russian organization Wagner near its borders, saying that Warsaw should be grateful to him for having them under its control.
An unspecified number of Wagner fighters who staged a brief mutiny in Russia in June have since moved to Belarus and begun training Lukashenko’s army, prompting Poland to begin moving more than 1,000 of its own troops closer to the border.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, joked during a meeting with him last month that some of Wagner’s fighters wanted to enter Poland and “to take a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszow.”
The state-run Belta news agency today carried statements by Lukashenko who said Poles “should pray that we are holding (Wagner fighters) and taking care of them. Otherwise, without us, they would have gone through and destroyed Rzeszow and Warsaw causing great damage. For this they shouldn’t blame me, they should say thank you.”
Rzeszow is a city in southeastern Poland near the Ukrainian border.
On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said a group of 100 Wagner fighters had arrived in the Belarusian city of Grodno near the Polish border, describing the situation as “increasingly dangerous”.
“No detachment of Wagner’s 100 men moved this way”
Lukashenko, in his latest statements, he initially appeared to deny this, to repair immediately after its refusal. “Suddenly, I heard recently, that Poland became furious because supposedly a detachment of up to a hundred people is coming here,” he said.
“Not one detachment of Wagner’s 100 men moved this way. And if they did, they did so only to transfer their military experience to the (Belarusian) brigades concentrated in Brest and Grodno.”
Lukashenko helped Putin in the war in Ukraine, allowing him to start it partly from the territory of Belarus and allowing the use of his bases to train Russian troops.
He has not committed his own troops to the war, but has said they would benefit from the training of Wagner, who fought in some of the war’s toughest battles in Ukraine.
“I must teach my army, for an army that does not fight is half an army“, he said.
Source: News Beast
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