Poland will double the number of troops stationed at the border with Belarus by forwarding 2,000 additional troops instead of the previously announced 1,000Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik said this Wednesday.
“It will not be a thousand soldiers, but two thousand,” Wasik told the Polish agency PAP, quoted by France’s AFP, referring to the reinforcement approved by the defense ministry.
Poland has recently warned of the threat of provocations from Belarus and the potential dangers of the presence of thousands of Wagner Group mercenaries in the neighboring country.
Russian mercenaries from a private group, who were very active in the war against Ukraine, were transferred to Belarus in June after a brief uprising against the Russian military hierarchy.
Warsaw also accused Belarus and Russia of orchestrating a new influx of migrants to the European Union (EU) to destabilize the region.
To deal with a record number of attempts to cross the border, Polish border guards asked for a thousand soldiers to be sent early in the week, but the government doubled the reinforcements.
The troops will be deployed within two weeks and will join the 2,000 troops already stationed along the border with Belarus, the eastern border of the EU and NATO, of which Poland is a part.
In addition to the army, Poland currently has more than 5,000 border guards and 500 riot police deployed on the border with Belarus.
Wasik said attempts to illegally enter Poland across the border with Belarus were organized by Belarusian guards themselves.
“On the other hand, if we had real border guards, and not smuggling services, these border crossings wouldn’t exist at all,” he said.
According to Polish border guards, 19,000 migrants have tried to enter Poland since the beginning of the year, compared to 16,000 in all of 2022.
Last month alone, more than 4,000 migrants tried to cross the Polish border.
Belarus, led by Alexander Lukashenko, supports Russia’s war against Ukraine, sparked on February 24, 2022 by the invasion of Moscow.
Since the summer of 2021, thousands of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa have crossed or attempted to cross the Polish border.
The West accused Belarus of orchestrating this influx with its Russian ally as part of a hybrid attack, which Minsk denies.
In response, Poland closed the border to non-residents, including aid workers and the media, for nine months.
It also installed a metal barrier equipped with electronic equipment and authorized the return of immigrants, a practice condemned by international organizations and courts.
Source: DN
