July 29th, 2023

My new post.

Wagner troops moving towards Polish border and could try sneaking across, PM says

More than 100 troops from the Russian mercenary group Wagner are moving towards a thin strip of land between Poland and Lithuania, Poland’s prime minister says, who warned they could pose as migrants to cross the border.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Saturday that his government had received information that the Wagner mercenaries were not far from Grodno, a city in western Belarus close to the land, which is also known as the Suwalki gap or corridor.

Thousands of Wagner troops are reportedly in Belarus following a failed military uprising in Russia.

Morawiecki repeated allegations that Belarus, a key ally to Russia, has been sending migrants westward in an attempt to overwhelm Polish border forces.

The troop movements, Morawiecki said, appeared to be another element in this campaign to destabilize the border.

“They will probably be disguised as Belarusian border guards and will help illegal immigrants to enter Polish territory, destabilize Poland, but they will also probably try to infiltrate Poland pretending to be illegal immigrants and this creates additional risks,” he said.

So far this year, there have been about 16,000 attempts by migrants to cross the border illegally, “pushed to Poland” by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Morawiecki said.

What exactly Wagner troops are doing in Grodno is unclear, as Wagner has not commented on the reports. But deploying Russian-allied forces near the Suwalki corridor would represent an escalation that could rattle NATO and EU members.

Though just 60 miles long, the corridor is strategically important to NATO, the EU, Russia and Belarus. The border region connects the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to Belarus and it is the only overland link between the Baltic states and the rest of the EU.

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385130362937540608

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385131363136438277

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385132726553673731

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385133631214714885

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385138099381600256

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385140462695743497

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385142842157957125

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385170451080151040

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385144745717661701

https://community.oppo.com/thread/1385145935700426760

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10645403/

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10645404/