Satellite images analyzed by the Associated Press (AP) this Saturday reveal the recent construction of a military camp in Belarus and it is believed it could house mercenaries from the Wagner group, the news agency said.
The footage suggests dozens of tents have been set up over the past two weeks on a former military base on the outskirts of Osipovichi, a town 230 kilometers north of the border with Ukraine.
A satellite image taken last June 15 showed no sign of the lines of green and white structures clearly visible in later images from June 30.
Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenaries avoided prosecution by negotiating a departure for Belarus last week after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a solution to end the Prigozhin-led insurgency, which has sparked a revolt and led a military column almost to Moscow.
Lukashenko said his country, an ally of Moscow and highly dependent on the Russian regime, could use the experience and knowledge of the Wagner group and announced the offer to the mercenaries of an “abandoned military unit” to set up a camp on to put.
Aliaksandr Azarau, leader of the anti-Lukashenko guerrilla group BYPOL and made up of former military personnel, told the AP by telephone on Thursday that construction of the camp near Osipovichi was underway.
More than 8,000 mercenaries from the Wagner group could be deployed in Belarus, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border troops told Ukrainska Pravda newspaper. Andriy Demchenko said that in response, Ukraine would strengthen its 1,084-kilometer border with Belarus.
Lukashenko had previously authorized the Kremlin to use Belarusian territory to send troops and weapons to Ukraine. It has also welcomed a continued Russian military presence, with military camps and joint exercises, and has also agreed to receive Russian tactical nuclear weapons.
According to Demchenko, some 2,000 Russian troops are still stationed in Belarus.
On Friday, Lukashenko said the Belarusian armed forces benefited from the training of the Wagner group and assured that the mercenaries pose no threat to civilians.
He also said it was “right” that Belarus should not use the tactical nuclear weapons sent to the territory and that it should not become directly involved in the war against Ukraine.
“The longer we live, the more we become convinced of it [as armas nucleares] they must be with us, in Belarus, in a safe place. And I am sure we will never have to use them as long as we have them and the enemy will never step on our territory,” Lukashenko said.
The Wagner group, led by Prigozhin, started an uprising a week ago by seizing without resistance the Russian city of Rostov, the headquarters of the army’s southern command, with the intention of moving to Moscow to remove the military leaders in response to an alleged bombing of mercenaries in Ukraine.
In the middle of the conflict with the Kremlin and 200 kilometers from Moscow province, a military column of the Wagner Group reversed last Saturday afternoon, after mediation by the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, in an agreement to stop the uprising, amnesty for mercenaries and sending Prigozhin and some of his men into exile in Belarus, and offering others the chance to be integrated into Russia’s regular armed forces.
The Wagner group led the way from the beginning of the invasion and played a leading role in the capture of Bakhmut, in Donetsk province (east), in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war in Ukraine, at the cost of high casualties, amid of Prigozhin’s open accusations of lack of military support from Moscow.
Source: DN
