Fighters from Russia's private Wagner mercenary force are being moved close to NATO's eastern flank to destabilize the military alliance, Poland's prime minister said on Thursday (August 3).
Wagner soldiers have begun training with the Belarus national army, prompting Poland to start moving more than 1,000 troops closer to the border. On Tuesday it accused Belarus of violating its airspace with military helicopters.
"We have to be aware that the number of these provocations will increase," Mateusz Morawiecki said after meeting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda in eastern Poland.
"This is what the operational activities on their side are about. In order to destabilise. In order to create unrest, chaos, uncertainty," he added.
The politicians met in the Suwalki Gap, a sparsely populated but strategically important area of Polish territory between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad that joins the Baltic states to other NATO members.
Nauseda said the number of Wagner fighters in Belarus could be higher than 4,000.
Belarus allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to use its territory as a launch pad for the Ukraine invasion, but has not committed its own troops to the war.
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