Ukraine and Poland reported on the arrival of “Wagnerovians” in Belarus

Ukrainian and Polish officials reported the arrival in Belarus of mercenaries of the private military company “Wagner” from Russia. Reuters writes about this on Sunday with reference to the information received a day earlier from the press secretary of the Ukrainian border service Andrii Demchenko.

“Wagner is in Belarus,” Demchenko wrote in a Telegram channel, noting that the country is witnessing the movement of “separate groups” from Russia.

Some members of this PMC have been in Belarus at least since Tuesday, two sources close to the Wagnerites told Reuters.

Deputy Minister-Coordinator of Poland’s special services, Stanislav Zharyn, said that Warsaw also has confirmation of the presence of “Wagner” mercenaries in Belarus. “There are several hundreds of them at the moment,” wrote Zharin on Twitter. Earlier this month, Poland announced that it was strengthening its border with Belarus to counter potential threats.

On Friday this week, the Belarusian Ministry of Defense reported on the arrival of PMC “Wagner” mercenaries in the Mogilev region. According to the department, they are at the training ground next to the Osipovychs and are conducting training for servicemen of the local territorial defense forces.

In turn, the “Belarusian Gayun” project, which monitors military activity, reported this week about the arrival of a large column of PMC “Wagner” in Belarus. “According to our data, at least 60 cars were seen in the convoy, among them pickup trucks, large trucks, “loaves” (microbuses – RS) and at least 3 buses for transporting people. The convoy was accompanied by the Belarusian traffic police”, – the content of the post “Nastoyastchee vremya” reports. Analysts of the project have concluded that the column of the PMC “Wagner” is moving to a tent camp in the village of Tsel, in the Osypovych district of the Mogilev region.

The Belarusian service of Radio Liberty, based on the analysis of satellite images, reported on the construction of a tent camp on the territory of an abandoned military unit near Osypovychy, near the village of Cel. Journalists counted more than 300 field tents, each of which can accommodate from 20 to 50 people.

• The relocation of PMC “Wagner” to Belarus was part of the agreement that put an end to the attempted rebellion by this group in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has not appeared in public since June 24.
• In a recent conversation with “Kommersant”, the President of Russia said that legally PMC “Wagner” does not exist. At the same time, shortly after Prigozhin’s rebellion, Putin declared that the state fully financed the group, paying 86 billion rubles an hour.
• The regime of the Belarusian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko is considered one of the main allies of Russia, which is waging a war against Ukraine. By not directly sending Belarusian troops to war, Lukashenko allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to launch a full-scale invasion. Since then, Minsk has also allowed Russian nuclear weapons to be placed in the country.