Fighters from the Wagner group have arrived in Belarus from Russia, Ukrainian and Polish officers mentioned on Saturday, a day after Minsk mentioned the mercenaries had been coaching the nation’s troopers southeast of the capital.
“Wagner is in Belarus,” Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border company, mentioned in an announcement on the Telegram messaging app. He mentioned the motion of “separate teams” from Russia had been noticed in Belarus.
Some Wagner fighters have been in Belarus since at the least Tuesday, two sources near the fighters instructed Reuters.
The Belarusian defence ministry launched a video on Friday, displaying what it mentioned had been Wagner fighters instructing Belarusian troopers at a army vary close to the city of Osipovichi.
Wagner’s transfer to Belarus was a part of a deal that ended the group’s mutiny try in June – after they took management of a Russian army headquarters, marched on Moscow and threatened to tip Russia into civil warfare – President Vladimir Putin mentioned.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has not been seen in public since he left the southern Russian metropolis of Rostov-on-Don late on June 24.
Poland’s deputy minister coordinator of particular providers, Stanislaw Zaryn, mentioned Warsaw additionally has affirmation of Wagner fighters’ presence in Belarus.
“There could also be a number of hundred of them for the time being,” Zaryn mentioned on Twitter.
Poland mentioned this month it was bolstering its border with Belarus to handle any potential threats.
Whereas not sending his personal troops to Ukraine, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko allowed Moscow to make use of Belarusian territory to launch its full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022 and has since let his nation be used as a base for Russian nuclear weapons.
The Belarusian Hajun venture, which displays army exercise within the nation and which is considered as an extremist formation by Belarusian authorities, mentioned a big column of at the least 60 automobiles entered Belarus in a single day Friday from Russia.
It mentioned the automobiles, together with vans, pickups, vans and buses, had licence plates of the self-styled Donetsk and Luhansk folks’s republics in what’s internationally recognised as jap Ukraine. In a transfer broadly condemned as unlawful, Moscow moved final 12 months to annex the republics, which have been Russian proxies since 2014.
Hajun mentioned it appeared {that a} Wagner column was headed to Tsel in central Belarus, the place overseas reporters had been final week proven a camp with a whole bunch of empty tents.
SOURCE: REUTERS
