It is not the first time Kyiv has expressed fears of Russian plans to use such a deception to draw Belarus into the war, having issued a similar warning in February shortly after Mr Lukashenko vowed that Minsk would only enter the conflict if attacked by Ukraine.
In a further development on Friday, Lithuania revoked the residency permits of 910 Belarusian citizens and 254 Russians who it claimed were a threat to national security, after handing them a questionnaire asking their opinions of the Ukraine war and status of annexed Crimea.
It came a day after Lithuanian president Gitanas Nauseda and Poland’s premier Mateusz Morawiecki held an urgent meeting, with the leaders of both EU and Nato nations warning that they were bracing for provocations by Russia and Belarus amid “increasing pressure on the borders”.
“We need to be aware that the number of provocations will rise. The Wagner group is extremely dangerous and they are being moved to [Nato’s] eastern flank to destabilise it,” Mr Morawiecki said, after the meeting in eastern Poland, close to its borders with Lithuania, Belarus and Russia.
The meeting came two days after Warsaw accused two Belarusian helicopters of flying briefly at low altitude into Polish air space – which Belarus denied, before summoning Poland’s chargé d’affaires to the foreign ministry in Minsk.
Poland has now begun to send more than 1,000 troops to its eastern border, as Lithuania’s president warned that there could now be more than four times that number of Wagner fighters in Belarus.
“We must not only talk about measures at the national level but also … what should be done if this situation becomes even more complicated, including the closure of the border with Belarus,” Mr Nauseda said. “This should be done in a coordinated manner between Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.”
Mr Lukashenko has repeatedly taunted Poland over the new presence of Wagner troops in Belarus, joking that Warsaw should thank him for keeping the mercenaries in check. Otherwise, they “would have seeped through and smashed up Rzeszow and Warsaw in no small way”, he claimed.
Source link : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belarus-false-flag-ukraine-russia-b2387801.html
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Publish date : 2023-08-04 07:00:00
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