Belarus begins to receive pressure from the mercenaries of the Wagner Group

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I will. The Wagner group started to put pressure on us: ‘We want to go west. Let us go’. And I tell them, why do you want to go west? ‘Well, on an excursion to Warsaw or Rzeszow,'” explained the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenkoin an interview with his Russian colleague, Vladimir Putinthis Sunday in Saint Petersburg.

Likewise, Lukashenko stated: «I keep them in the center, as agreed; Belarus does not want to transfer them there because they are in a bad mood. And, kudos to him, [hay que reconocer] to know what’s going on,” he commented in front of the cameras during a meeting to discuss the future of relations between Moscow and Minsk and the so-called state of the union.

However, numerous sources report on the joint training of Wagner’s troops with the Belarusian army near Brest, on the border with Ukraine and Poland. Considering these developments, Warsaw transferred part of its army to its side of the borderwhich Putin used to accuse her of wanting to occupy the western part of Ukraine and warned that any attack on Belarus would be considered an attack on Russia itself.

On July 23, the Gayún war observation group indicated that Wagner’s tenth column of troops had already arrived in Belarus. The first 9,000 soldiers from Ukraine are housed in a temporary camp in the town of Tsel, in central Belarus, but soldiers are also registering at a training camp just 50 kilometers from the Polish border.

Wagner’s troops began arriving in Belarus after the June 24 coup against the Kremlin. Then Lukashenko assumed a key role in resolving the conflict, as a mediator between Putin and the leader of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The agreement between the parties allowed Wagners who did not want to join the regular Russian army to “go into exile” in Belarus to avoid prosecution.

Since then, Prigozhin has already been seen in Russia, and his plans to reactivate his military activities in strategic areas, especially in Africa, are beyond doubt. It is estimated that of the nearly 80,000 soldiers that Wagner once had, he now has about 25,000.

Ukraine, under lock and key

A few hours after Lukashenka’s statements, the Ukrainian authorities also reacted:The situation here is completely under control. There is no movement of equipment or personnel of any troops near our border, whether they are Russian mercenaries, or troops of the Belarusian or Russian army,” Ukrainian Border Service spokesman Andriy Demchenko ruled out any kind of maneuver on Ukrainian television.

Demchenko also assured that border surveillance continues as Wagner’s troops continue to arrive in Belarus, but accepts that Ukraine must be prepared for any incident on its borders, with more security and resources for border guards.