Ukraine's neighbor raises alarm over Wagner

Poland claims more than 100 members of the private military company have been deployed near the border with Belarus

The Wagner private military company is preparing a “hybrid attack” on Polish territory from Belarus, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has claimed.

“According to our information, more than a hundred Wagner group mercenaries have moved out towards the Suwalki Gap near Grodno in Belarus,” Morawiecki said during a press conference on Saturday.

The Suwalki Gap is an area immediately southwest of the border between Lithuania and Poland, which separates Belarus from the Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.

The alleged move by the PMC is “undoubtedly a step towards an upcoming hybrid attack on Polish territory,” the prime minister claimed.

He suggested that the Wagner fighters could pose as Belarusian border guards and help illegal immigrants enter Poland, in an effort to destabilize the country.

According to Morawiecki, members of the PMC could also try to infiltrate Polish territory themselves by pretending to be illegal immigrants, which “creates additional risks.”

Morawiecki noted that Warsaw has been dealing with “attacks” on its border by illegal immigrants for the past two years, with 16 such crossing attempts this year alone. He claimed they were instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.