Warsaw sends troops to border, accusing Belarus
of violating its airspace
Polish military says army helicopters crossed eastern
flank, adding to tensions caused by proximity of Wagner fighters
Reuters in
Warsaw
Tue 1 Aug
2023 22.28 BST
Poland has
rushed troops to its eastern border after accusing Belarus, Russia’s closest
ally, of violating its airspace with military helicopters.
The
Belarusian military denied any such violation and accused Poland, a Nato member
and one of Ukraine’s most fervent backers in its conflict with Russia, of
inventing the accusation to justify a buildup of its troops.
Belarus
leader Alexander Lukashenko had earlier taunted Poland over the presence of
Russian Wagner mercenaries near their joint border.
Poland’s
defence ministry said it was sending “additional forces and resources,
including combat helicopters”. It said it had informed Nato of the border
violation and Belarus’s chargé d’affaires had been summoned to provide an
explanation.
The Polish
military initially denied any border violation had occurred but later, after
consultations, said the intrusion took place “at a very low height, hard to
intercept by radar”.
Belarus’s
defence ministry, writing on Telegram, said Warsaw had changed its mind about
the incident “apparently after consulting its overseas masters”.
“This
statement was not backed up by data from Poland,” it said. “The Belarusian
defence ministry views it in the manner of an ‘old wives’ tale’ and notes there
were no border violations by Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters.”
People
living around the eastern Polish village of Białowieża, close to the Belarus
border, shared accounts on social media of what they said were border
violations before the defence ministry issued its statement.
Belarus
allowed the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to use its territory as a launch
pad for the Ukraine invasion, but Lukashenko has not committed his own troops
to the war.
The former
Soviet state has a long history of animosity with Poland, as does Russia.
Last week,
Putin accused Poland of harbouring territorial ambitions on Belarus and said it
would consider any attack on its neighbour as an attack on itself.
Earlier on
Tuesday, Lukashenko mockingly told Poland it should thank him for keeping in
check Wagner mercenaries now stationed in Belarus after an abortive mutiny
against the Kremlin last month.
An
unspecified number of the Wagner fighters have since moved to Belarus and begun
training Lukashenko’s army. Poland had already started moving more than 1,000
of its own troops closer to the border.
Lukashenko
joked at a meeting with Putin last month that some of the fighters were keen to
press into Poland and “go on a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszów”.
State news
agency Belta quoted him on Tuesday as saying that Polish people “should pray
that we’re holding on to [the Wagner fighters] and providing for them.
Otherwise, without us, they would have seeped through and smashed up Rzeszów
and Warsaw in no small way. So they shouldn’t reproach me, they should say
thank you.”
Rzeszów is
a city near the Ukrainian border.
On
Saturday, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said a group of 100
Wagner fighters had moved closer to the Belarusian city of Grodno, near the
Polish border, describing the situation as “increasingly dangerous”.
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