Poland announces it may completely close its border with Belarus
Poland has announced that it may close its border completely if Belarus makes a 'serious provocation'. After Belarus directed Wagner fighters to the border to put pressure on Warsaw, Poland has stepped up measures in the region in case the 'dangerous and ruthless' soldiers cross the border.
Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said on Thursday that Poland could completely close the 418-kilometer border with Belarus in response to any "serious provocation" by Minsk.
Poland has been more cautious on its borders with Russia's ally after the diversion of Wagner troops to Belarus.
Warsaw says the border has long been the target of Belarusian provocations. In 2021, Belarus began deliberately diverting Middle Eastern and African migrants into the region to put pressure on Polish border guards and the army.
Since then, Poland has begun building a barrier in the border area, replete with cameras and electronic surveillance equipment.
However, an earlier statement by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in which he sarcastically said that the Wagner fighters wanted to go to Poland, increased the risks to border security and led to the deployment of additional troops to the region.
'NO GREEN MAN WILL EVER RUN AT OUR BORDERS'
"We are ready for different scenarios. No green men will ever be allowed to run at our borders," Kaminski said in Krynki, a town just a couple of kilometers from the border with Belarus, referring to the informal description of paramilitary groups that were instrumental in Russia's takeover of Crimea in 2014.
"What they are capable of doing in the territories where they appear," Kaminski said the same day in another city near the border, noting Wagner's "dangerous and ruthless" role in Africa, Ukraine and the Middle East.
"We are the complete opposite of our predecessors who limited the Polish Armed Forces [especially] to the east of the Vistula River," Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said in the town of Koden near the border, which he also visited on Thurday.
Source: Intellinews
