Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak upped the ante on Thursday on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Warsaw is deploying 10,000 hardened troops to “reinforce” its border with Belarus. This comes on top of 1,000 Polish troops from the 12th and 17th Mechanized Brigades that…
Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak upped the ante on Thursday on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Warsaw is deploying 10,000 hardened troops to “reinforce” its border with Belarus. This comes on top of 1,000 Polish troops from the 12th and 17th Mechanized Brigades that were ordered by Blaszczak to the frontier in early July after Moscow announced remnants of the Wagner Group would be relocating to Belarus following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed mutiny.
Warsaw’s decision to get tough was prompted by two Belarusian military helicopters violating its airspace near Bialowieza on Aug. 1. There are reasons to believe this might indeed be the case. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Putin’s deal with Prigozhin may have collapsed after “Lukashenko refused to finance Wagner when he discovered that Russia would not be paying for Wagner as he had evidently expected.”
Poland is in no mood to play games and is likely to extract a cost from Lukashenko. Minsk will be forced to counter Warsaw’s deployment of 10,000 troops along its border — and now, it seems, Prigozhin’s mercenaries will not be available to help. Moreover, Putin will also likely pay a price for Lukashenko’s folly in that he will be forced to draw down Belarusian troops fixing Ukrainian forces to the south and redeploy them to his border with Poland.
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