Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Wagner troops are poised to infiltrate NATO territory.
Over 100 mercenaries have gathered near Poland’s border with Belarus, he said on Saturday.
Morawiecki warned that the fighters could pose as migrants or border guards to try and sneak in.
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More than 100 Wagner mercenaries are approaching Poland’s border with Belarus, and may try to enter NATO territory disguised as migrants, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned on Saturday.
The Russian fighters are near Grodno, a Belarusian city 10 miles from the Polish border, Morawiecki said at a press conference in Gliwice.
Apart from pretending to be migrants, these mercenaries may also pose as Belarusian border guards helping migrants cross into the European Union, Morawiecki added, though he did not say how his government had obtained this information.
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“This is certainly a step towards a further hybrid attack on Polish territory,” Morawiecki said, per a translation by the BBC.
Polish officials have for years accused Belarus of attempting to overwhelm Poland’s border forces by sending migrants west — a charge Minsk has denied.
On Friday, Lithuanian deputy interior minister Arnoldas Abramavičius told reporters that Poland and Lithuania may close their borders to Belarus over concerns about a Wagner infiltration.
The Wagner Group was once close to the Kremlin, and deployed its troops in Ukraine during the war until late May.
Thousands of its fighters moved to Belarus as part of an exile deal for founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, struck during his short-lived mutiny against Moscow.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he brokered the deal as Prigozhin marched his forces toward the Kremlin. Wagner troops were told they could move and stay in exile with Prigozhin, sign up with the Russian military, or return home without fear of prosecution.
Earlier this month, a new image appeared to show Prigozhin living in a tent at a campsite in Belarus while his forces trained local troops.
Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Poland’s ruling party, warned that Wagner’s men are “not in Belarus for fun.”
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“They are there to create various types of crises, primarily directed against Poland,” he said, per Agence France Presse.
Meanwhile, Poland is sending around 1,000 soldiers and 500 police officers to reinforce security on its eastern border.
