Poland will send an additional 2,000 troops to reinforce its border with Belarus, a deputy interior minister told Poland’s state news agency on Wednesday, amid heightened tensions in the area related to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The minister, Maciej Wasik, said that the deployment was double what the country’s Border Guard had requested and that the reinforcements would arrive in two weeks, according to PAP, Poland’s state news agency. There was no immediate response from Belarus.
While Mr. Wasik did not specify to PAP what had prompted the decision, the deployment comes as concerns are mounting in Poland, a NATO member, over the presence of mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner private military company in neighboring Belarus, a staunch Russian ally.
The Wagner fighters were relocated to Belarus following their short-lived June mutiny in Russia, which ended after President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus brokered a deal allowing them to avoid prosecution by relocating to his country. Belarus borders Poland to the west, Russia to the east and Ukraine to the south.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said last week that there were at least 4,000 Wagner fighters in Belarus. He warned against “provocations” and “sabotage actions” from Belarus by the relocated Wagner fighters, a caution that came days after two Belarusian helicopters breached Polish airspace, heightening jitters in the region.
In late July, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said its soldiers were being trained by Wagner fighters near the border with Poland, prompting Poland to begin moving military forces to bolster its side of the border.
In a speech to the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday, the agency’s top official, Sergei K. Shoigu, did not directly address Poland’s announcement of the new deployment, but said that existing threats to Russia’s security were “related to the militarization of Poland.”
New threats to Russia had “multiplied in the western and northwestern strategic directions,” Mr. Shoigu said, which he added was due in large part to the hefty military support NATO members in the region were offering to Ukraine. Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, joined NATO this spring.
Three other of Russia’s regional NATO neighbors — Latvia and Lithuania, which border Belarus, and Estonia — joined Poland in issuing a statement on Wednesday noting the third anniversary of Mr. Lukashenko’s claim of victory in a hotly contested and fraud-ridden presidential election. His fealty to the Kremlin grew shortly after, when he had to ask Mr. Putin for help suppressing widespread protests against his rule.
“Ignoring the will of the vast majority of the Belarusian people, the regime grants Moscow full political and logistical support” for its war, the statement from the four countries said. Belarus, it added, “has been made into a true hotbed of destabilization in the heart of Europe.”
Anushka Patil contributed reporting.