WARSAW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th August, 2023) Poland has launched an operation to deploy additional 1,000 military on its border with Belarus in connection with an alleged increase in illegal attempts to enter the country from the neighboring territories, the Polish Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
On Monday, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Border Guard Tomasz Praga sent a request to the country's defense ministry for the transfer of 1,000 more soldiers to the Polish-Belarusian border in addition to 2,000 military already stationed there.
"In connection with the dynamic situation on the Polish-Belarusian border and the request of the border guard commandant to step up participation in border protection, the defense minister instructed (the relevant departments) to fulfill the request and send additional troops to patrol the Polish-Belarusian border," the Polish Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Last Tuesday, the ministry said that two Belarusian helicopters had allegedly intruded into Poland's air space. Following the incident, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak ordered an increase in the military contingent on the border with Belarus. The Belarusian Defense Ministry replied that Minsk had provided Warsaw with objective air control data indicating an absence of any grounds for the accusations.
The developments came less that a week after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that over 100 fighters of the Wagner Group private military company, which had moved to Belarus after a failed coup in Russia in June, were deployed near the Suwalki Gap � a narrow stretch of Polish and Lithuanian territory that separates Belarus from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Morawiecki called the move an attempt to help illegal immigrants enter Polish territory. The Belarusian authorities denied that Wagner fighters were planning an incursion into Poland.
