Russian paramilitary forces in Belarus have “taken up positions” near the borders of two NATO allies, according to Lithuania’s head of state.
“Some Wagner fighters are close to our border, having taken up positions in the Grodno region, which means that this situation is very convenient for provocations both on the Polish-Belarusian and Lithuanian-Belarusian borders,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said.
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About 4,000 Wagner Group fighters have decamped to Belarus, according to Polish and Lithuanian data, pursuant to a deal to bring mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutinous march on Moscow to a rapid close. Prigozhin has maintained a high-profile role in the Kremlin orbit in the weeks since his abortive uprising, and his entrenchment in Belarus has stirred a transatlantic discussion about “a possible aggression” against Poland or the Baltic States, as Latvia‘s top border guard put it.
“We see in recent years that the threat is coming from Belarus,” Latvian Border Guard commander Guntis Pujats said in a separate media appearance on Thursday. “I think we will be able to observe serious preparations on the other side of the border. If the need arises, we have sufficient resources to counteract it.”
NATO strategists have long regarded Poland’s border with Lithuania, known as the Suwalki Gap, as one of the most vulnerable places in Europe. That 40-mile stretch of territory is all that divides Belarus, a Russian client-state led by aging dictator Alexander Lukashenko, from Kaliningrad, a sovereign Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea.
President Joe Biden’s administration warned Russia specifically not to try to link those territories last summer after a Russian intelligence official vowed “serious negative consequences for residents of Lithuania” in relation to a sanctions dispute.
“I believe that the Suwalki Corridor remains a potential target of provocation by both Russia and Belarus,” Nausėda said.
Still, Western analysts doubt the Wagner Group’s ability to project significant power into NATO territory in the wake of the force’s brief uprising.
“Wagner forces in Belarus pose no military threat to Poland (or Ukraine, for that matter) until and unless they are re-equipped with mechanized equipment,” a team of analysts with the Institute for the Study of War assessed this week.
That military dynamic underpins some internal skepticism about the threats described by Poland and Baltic leaders, particularly as Polish parliamentary elections approach this fall.
“The people in power are playing strange games,” retired Polish colonel Andrzej Kruczyński told a Lithuanian public broadcaster. “[Wagner forces] are in no way a threat to us. It is necessary to look at the situation calmly. We can continue strengthening the border, but not to […] stir up unrest [in the society].”
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Warsaw accused Belarus of violating Polish airspace on Monday. Belarusian officials denied it, even as dictator Alexander Lukashenko reiterated “a joke” about the Wagner Group wanting to attack United States troops stationed in Rzeszow, the Polish border town that has functioned as a hub for international military aid to Ukraine since last year.
“Any attacks by the Wagner Group will be seen as an attack by the Russian Government,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who leads the U.S. mission to the United Nations, told reporters Monday.
