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Mercenaries of the Wagner group in Belarus/Poland reinforce the border

2023-07-16 15:46:35, Kosova & Bota CNA

Mercenaries from the Russian private group Wagner are in Belarus, Ukrainian and Polish officials said Saturday, a day after Minsk announced they were training Belarusian soldiers southeast of the capital.

"Wagner is in Belarus", wrote in a message on the "Telegram" network, the spokesman of the Ukrainian border agency, Andriy Demchenko. He said that "special groups" displaced from Russia had been spotted in Belarus.

Some fighters from the Wagner group had arrived in Belarus since Tuesday, two sources close to the fighters told the Reuters news agency.

The Belarusian defense ministry released a video on Friday that it said showed fighters from the Wagner group training Belarusian soldiers at a military camp near the town of Osipovichi.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, this move of the Wagner group to Belarus was part of the deal that ended the rebellion in June, when the mercenaries seized control of a Russian army headquarters, marched on Moscow and nearly plunged Russia into civil war.

Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has not been seen in public since leaving the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don in the late hours of June 24.

Mercenaries of the Wagner group in Belarus/Poland reinforce the border

The deputy minister for the coordination of Poland's special services, Stanislaw Zaryn, said that Warsaw has also confirmed the presence in Belarus of fighters of the Wagner group.

"There may currently be several hundred of them", wrote Mr. Zaryn on "Twitter".

Poland announced this month that it was reinforcing its border with Belarus to prepare for potential threats.

Although it did not send Belarusian forces to Ukraine, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to launch its frontal attack on Ukraine in February 2022 and has since allowed the use of his country as a base for its nuclear weapons. Russia.

The Belarusian organization "Hajun Project", which monitors military activity in the country and is considered an extremist group by the Belarusian authorities, announced that a long convoy of at least 60 vehicles entered Belarus from Russia on Friday night.

The organization said the vehicles, including trucks, SUVs, vans and buses, bore license plates of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. In a move considered illegal, Moscow decided last year to annex these republics, which have served as Russia's vassals since 2014.

The Hajun Project said a convoy of the Wagner group appeared to be headed for Tsel, in central Belarus, where foreign journalists were shown a camp with hundreds of tents pitched last week.

A video circulated on Saturday evening by Russian war correspondent Alexander Kotz showed a convoy of trucks and armored cars on a highway in southern Russia, some of them flying the flag of the Wagner Group.

Reuters news agency could not independently verify the reports of the Belarusian organization Hajun. Also, there were no immediate comments from Russia or Belarus./ VOA