Polish government accuses Wagner of approaching border region
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July 29 (UPI) -- The Polish government on Saturday accused the Wagner mercenary group of moving fighters towards the Suwalki Gap that separates Poland from the Russian Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad.
"We have information that over 100 mercenaries of the Wagner Group have moved towards the Suwalki Gap near Grodno in Belarus," Polish Prime Minster Mateusz Morawiecki told a press conference Saturday.
"This is certainly a step towards a further hybrid attack on Polish territory," he said.
The Suwalki Gap is a narrow, 60-mile land corridor stretching between Poland and Lithuania and ending on one side at the border of Russian ally Belarus and on the other at Kaliningrad, which remains part of Russia.
It represents the only land border between the NATO members of the Baltic states such as Lithuania and the rest of North Atlantic alliance.
The Polish prime minister claimed there had been about 16,000 attempts to cross the border between Poland and Belarus this year, and that the migrants had been "pushed to Poland" by presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"They will probably be disguised as Belarusian border guards and will help illegal immigrants to enter Polish territory, destabilize Poland, but they will also probably try to infiltrate Poland pretending to be illegal immigrants, and this creates additional risks," Morawiecki said.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Polish Radio that Wagner "are in Belarus to create various kinds of crises, mainly targeting Poland."
"We are taking all measures, making preparations, expanding defenses," he said.
While the Polish government has framed the issue of migration in the context of the war in Ukraine, the government has been adopting anti-immigrant policies for years.
Amnesty International has accused the Polish government of "hypocrisy" for applying different standards to Ukrainian refugees and refugees from outside Europe.
"Polish border guards have systematically rounded up and violently pushed back people crossing from Belarus, sometimes threatening them with guns," Amnesty said in a 2022 report.
"The vast majority of those who have been fortunate enough to avoid being pushed back to Belarus and to apply for asylum in Poland are forced into automatic detention, without a proper assessment of their individual situation and the impact detention would have on their physical and mental health," the human rights group said.
Last year, the Polish government started construction on a 115-mile-long wall along the border with Belarus.
