Poland Forms Specialist Sapper Unit To Counter Wagner Threat

Poland is creating a new military engineering battalion close to the contentious Suwałki Gap after Belarus' leader, Alexander Lukashenko, said Wagner Group mercenaries were itching to move into Warsaw's territory.

"A sapper battalion will soon be created in Augustów," a town close to Poland's border with Belarus, Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said on Sunday, referring to the military engineers.

"This is another military unit built by us from scratch and I assure you that it will not be the last one," he said in a post to Twitter, adding: "We care about the security of the eastern flank!"

NATO nation Poland, one of Ukraine's most vocal supporters, has expressed concerns over a Minsk-brokered deal that allowed Wagner mercenary fighters and the group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, to relocate to Belarus. The agreement followed the aborted Wagner Group mutiny and advance on Moscow that shook the Kremlin in late June.

Russian lawmaker Andrey Kartapolov has previously suggested that Wagner forces could be in Belarus to seize the Suwałki Gap, a strategic strip of territory on the Polish-Lithuanian border separating Kaliningrad from Belarus. This claim could not be independently verified. Should Wagner fighters move into Polish territory, it would trigger a response from NATO under the alliance's Article 5, which considers an attack on a member as an attack on all other member states.

Earlier this month, Poland said it was redeploying 1,000 soldiers over concerns about the presence of the Wagner Group in Belarus. At the beginning of July, Mariusz Kamiński, Poland's interior minister, said Warsaw was transferring 500 police officers to the border with Belarus because of the "tense situation."

On Monday, the independent Belarusian Hajun project, which monitors military activity in Belarus, said at least 3,500 Wagner mercenaries had arrived in the country. In an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, published on Saturday, a spokesperson for Ukraine's State Border Guard Service said around 5,000 mercenaries had now crossed into Belarus. Video footage published by Wagner channels last week also indicated Prigozhin's presence in a military camp in the Moscow-aligned country.

On Thursday, Belarus' defense ministry said Wagner Group fighters would train Belarusian troops and would be based in Brest, just three miles from the Polish border.

In remarks to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, Lukashenko said Wagner fighters close to the Polish border were "insisting on going westward" into Warsaw's territory.

Wagner mercenaries "will go to see the sights of Warsaw and Rzeszów," Lukashenko said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in remarks reported by Belarus' state news agency, BeLTA.

The Wagner troops "hold a grudge against Rzeszów," Lukashenko said, referring to the southeastern Polish city as a source for military hardware that Ukraine has used against them.

However, the Belarusian leadership is keeping Wagner fighters within Minsk's territory as agreed, Lukashenko said.

"I would not like to redeploy them there," he added. "They're angry."

Speaking on Friday, Putin said Polish lawmakers "dream of the Belarusian lands," adding that Moscow would respond to aggression against Belarus "with all the means at our disposal."

Belarus and Russia form part of the Union State, an agreement tying Minsk and Moscow together.

"Aggression against Belarus will be like an attack on Russia," Lukashenko said on Sunday.

Newsweek has reached out to the Polish Defense Ministry and the Belarusian Foreign Ministry for comment via email.