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Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has expressed concern about troop movements of Russian Wagner mercenaries in neighboring Belarus. “We have information that more than a hundred mercenaries from the Wagner Group have advanced towards the Suwalki Gap, not far from Grudno in Belarus,” the national-conservative politician said on Saturday, according to the PAP agency.
Suwalki Gap
This will make the situation at the border “even more threatening,” Morawiecki warned during a visit to an arms factory in Gliwice in southern Poland. Grudno is located in the west of Belarus, about 15 kilometers from the border with NATO member Poland. The Suwalki Gap is a corridor on Polish and Lithuanian territory between Belarus and the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad. In an emergency, Russia could cut off the Baltic states from the rest of NATO territory by capturing it.
Morawiecki also said that 16,000 attempted border crossings by migrants from Belarus had already been detected this year. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to “push them through to Poland”.
Poland is currently in election campaign mode, as a new parliament will be elected in the EU member state in the autumn. In view of the Wagner mercenaries in Belarus, representatives of the Polish army spoke of a Russian propaganda campaign intended to cause unrest.
