NATO member Poland has announced plans to send thousands of additional troops to its increasingly tense border with Belarus, a key Russian ally.
Moscow and Minsk, which are bound by their own defense treaty, have both pledged to respond to perceived “unfriendly steps” by Warsaw.
On Aug. 10, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced that 10,000 troops will be sent to the border with Belarus, “of which 4,000 will directly support the Border Guard and 6,000 will be in the reserve.”
“We move the army closer to the border ... to scare away the aggressor so that it does not dare to attack us,” Mr. Blaszczak said in a radio interview.
On the same day, Mikhail Galuzin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said Moscow and Minsk would “respond symmetrically to any unfriendly steps by the Polish leadership.”
Over the past six weeks, Poland has steadily increased its military presence along its roughly 250-mile border with Belarus.
The buildup was ostensibly prompted by the recent arrival to Belarus of fighters from Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military company with ties to the Kremlin.
The Wagner Group is currently training units of the Belarusian army at military facilities located near the Polish border.
Last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki claimed that the Wagner presence in Belarus posed a threat to both Poland and NATO’s “eastern flank.”
Mr. Galuzin, for his part, accused Poland of militarizing its eastern border based on what he called “artificial pretexts.”
“The deployment of Wagner forces in our brother republic [i.e., Belarus] is another artificial pretext for Warsaw to begin a fresh round of military preparations,” he told Russia’s TASS news agency.
According to Polish officials, the recent deployments are also aimed at curbing rising numbers of undocumented migrants trying to cross the border.
Earlier this week, Tomasz Praga, head of Poland’s Border Guard, said 19,000 undocumented migrants had tried to enter Poland from Belarus this year alone.
Warsaw is accusing Belarus of funneling migrants from poor Middle Eastern and African countries across the border with the aim of “destabilizing” Poland.
The Belarusian authorities, for their part, deny the allegations.
Belarusian and Russian officials say the steady eastward movement of Polish troops suggests preparations by Warsaw for “larger-scale aggressive actions.”
Last month, Boris Gryzlov, Moscow’s envoy to Minsk, warned that Russia and Belarus were both prepared to “counter any threat” to their collective security.
Tengiz Dumbadze, a member of the Belarusian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said this week that Polish rapid-reaction forces were “already deployed only 40 kilometers [approximately 25 miles] from the border.”
“This indicates that [Poland] isn’t adopting a defensive posture, but rather an offensive stance,” Mr. Dumbadze was quoted as saying in the Russian media.
“[Belarus] has never represented a threat to anyone and never will. But we won’t tolerate provocations on our territory.”
Warsaw has blamed Belarus for staging its own border provocations.
On Aug. 1, Poland claimed that two Belarusian military helicopters had briefly violated its airspace.
Vowing to “respond to the threat,” Polish Deputy Defense Minister Wojciech Skurkiewicz called the alleged airspace breach a “provocation” aimed at both Poland and the NATO alliance.
Minsk, in turn, accused Poland of fabricating the story and “using it as a pretext to militarize border areas.”
‘Longstanding Policy’
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, relations between Moscow and Minsk have remained especially close.A Kremlin spokesman recently described Belarus as Russia’s “No. 1 ally.”
Since 1999, the two former Soviet republics have been bound by a “Union State” treaty, which aims to cement bilateral ties in the fields of defense and economy.
Last fall, Russia sent thousands of troops to Belarus—along with significant military hardware—under the aegis of the Union State treaty.
Earlier this year, Moscow unveiled plans to station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.
In June, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed that an unspecified number of Russian nuclear weapons had already arrived in the country.
In response to Poland’s recent border deployments, Moscow has warned that an attack on Belarus—“by Poland or any other aggressor”—would be viewed as an attack on Russia itself.
According to Mr. Galuzin, Poland’s ongoing border buildup is part of a “longstanding policy of enhancing NATO’s military potential along the western borders of the Union State.”
Russia and Belarus were together taking “appropriate steps to counter threats to the Union State’s security in line with the military doctrine of our association,” according to the diplomat.
