Polish PM Morawiecki: Wagner members could enter the EU as migrants

(Patria) - Wagner fighters in Belarus could pose as migrants and enter the EU, warned Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the BBC reported. Wagner could also facilitate illegal migration from Belarus, which Poland describes as a "hybrid war," he says.

About 100 Wagner soldiers have moved near the city of Grodno, near the Polish and Lithuanian border, the prime minister added. Some Wagner troops came to Belarus under an agreement to end a brief rebellion in Russia in June.

Warsaw says it sees Wagner's presence in Belarus as a potential threat and is seeking to strengthen its eastern flank. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has previously denied causing a migrant crisis in Europe by luring potential migrants to its borders with EU countries.

Morawiecki said on Saturday that more than 100 members of the Wagner group had moved to northwestern Belarus near the Suwalki Corridor – Poland's 95km border with Lithuania, which separates Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

He claimed that mercenaries could pose as Belarusian border guards to help migrants cross into the EU, or even pretend to be migrants themselves to enter the bloc.

"Now the situation is becoming even more dangerous," he said at a press conference on the occasion of a visit to an arms factory in Gliwice, southern Poland.

"This is certainly a step towards a further hybrid attack on Polish territory," he added.

The Polish Minister of Interior said on Thursday that Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia could jointly decide to close their borders with Belarus if incidents involving the Wagner group occur on their borders.

Last weekend, Lukashenko insisted that he would keep the Wagner mercenaries in central Belarus.

"They are asking to go west... to go on a trip to Warsaw...", Lukashenko joked in a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"But, of course, I am keeping them in central Belarus, as we agreed," he added.

Morawiecki said that so far this year there have been 16,000 attempts to cross the border between Belarus and Poland. According to the EU border agency Frontex, there were 2,312 illegal border crossings into the EU from Belarus between January and June.

Poland and Lithuania have erected fences along their borders with Belarus to try to reduce the number of people crossing illegally. Minsk has faced accusations of encouraging migrants from the Middle East to travel to the country by plane with false promises of easy access to the EU.

Polish border guards say Belarusian border guards are helping migrants cross illegally into the country, far from official checkpoints.

Morawiecki's comments come ahead of parliamentary elections this autumn, and the Polish government is seeking to highlight the actions it is taking to strengthen border security.