Warsaw accuses neighbors of violating airspace
Poland is sending troops to the border with Belarus and accusing Minsk of violating its airspace. The Polish military says army helicopters allegedly crossed the border between the two countries, escalating tensions caused by the proximity of Wagner fighters deployed on Belarusian territory.
Photo: pixabay.com
Warsaw has deployed troops to its eastern border after accusing Belarus, Russia's closest ally, of infringing on its military space with helicopters , according to Reuters.
Belarus's military has denied any such violation and accused Poland, a NATO member and one of Ukraine's staunchest supporters in its conflict with Russia, of fabricating the accusation from Warsaw to justify its troop build-up on its eastern border.
Former Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko taunted Poland over the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries near their shared border, Reuters reports.
The Polish Ministry of Defense said it was sending “additional forces and assets, including combat helicopters” to the border with Belarus. It said it had informed NATO of the border violation, and the Belarusian chargé d'affaires had been summoned to give an explanation.
The Polish military initially denied that there had been any border breach, but later said after consultations that the intrusion took place “at a very low altitude that is difficult to detect by radar.”
The Ministry of Defense of Belarus in a message on Telegram said Warsaw had changed its mind about the incident, “apparently after consulting its overseas commanders.”
“This statement was not supported by data from Poland,” the Belarusian military department said. – The Ministry of Defense of Belarus considers this to be “grandmother's fairy tales” and notes that the Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters did not breach the border.”
People living around the eastern Polish village of Bialowieza, near the border with Belarus, shared reports on social media of what they said was a border breach even before the Defense Ministry issued its statement.
< p> Last week, Russian President Putin he accused Poland of harboring territorial ambitions towards Belarus and said that Moscow would consider any attack on its neighbor as an attack on itself, Reuters reports.
Earlier on Tuesday, Lukashenko mockingly told Poland that it should thank him for keeping the Wagner PMC fighters, who are now stationed in Belarus after the failed coup in June. Since then, an unspecified number of Wagner fighters have moved to Belarus. Poland has already begun moving more than 1,000 of its own troops closer to the border.
Lukashenko joked in a meeting with Putin last month that some fighters are eager to get to Poland and “go on a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszów.” < /p>
On Tuesday, the state-run Belta news agency quoted him as saying that the Polish people “should pray that we keep [Wagner's fighters] and take care of them. Otherwise, without us, they would infiltrate and crush Rzeszow and Warsaw in no small measure. So they shouldn't blame me, they should thank me.”
Rzeszow is a Polish city near the border with Ukraine, Reuters explains.
On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, that a group of 100 Wagner fighters reportedly approached the Belarusian city of Grodno near the Polish border and described the situation as “still dangerous”.