Belarus military exercises raise tensions in Poland and Lithuania

Poland dispatched more troops to its border with Belarus on Tuesday after Minsk started military exercises that have heightened security concerns in neighbouring Nato countries.

The Belarus defence ministry said the military drills were designed to draw on experiences from Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, including the use of drones. Minsk has been loyal to Moscow throughout the full-scale invasion, which started last year and involved Russian troops being deployed from Belarus.

The exercises started on Monday in an area close to both Poland and Lithuania, prompting the deployment of an additional 1,000 Polish soldiers on top of the existing 2,000 troops stationed at the border. Lithuania said it was also planning to send more border guards to the Belarusian frontier.

The military build-up comes amid security concerns prompted by the relocation of Wagner Group paramilitaries to Belarus as part of a deal that ended a mutiny against Russia’s top brass.

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Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned last week that some Wagner troops had been spotted near the Belarus border and were potentially preparing “sabotage” actions against Poland and Lithuania. He estimated that at least 4,000 fighters had moved to Belarus. Last month, Belarus published footage of Wagner troops serving as military instructors for Belarusian soldiers.

The head of Lithuania’s border guards said on Tuesday that the situation remained tense but that most of the Wagner forces were not positioned close to the frontier. “The possibility of provocations at our border exists. We are preparing for this,” Rustamas Liubajevas told a press conference.

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The area where the drills are taking place is close to the strategically sensitive Suwałki Gap, which separates Belarus from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad where Russia’s Baltic fleet is headquartered.

Mr Morawiecki met Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda last week on the Polish side of the Suwałki Gap. After the meeting, Mr Nauséda said Poland and Lithuania stood ready “for any possible scenario” and would also jointly continue to assess whether to close completely their borders with Belarus.

Lithuania last week disclosed that it had declared almost 1,000 Belarusian nationals a threat to security, denying them a residency permit. It also stepped up its protests against the Ostrovets nuclear power plant in Belarus, situated less than 50km from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, which it has deemed a threat to its national security and public health.

Nato said the military alliance had “significantly increased its defensive presence” in eastern Europe and would “continue to do what is necessary to deter any threat and protect every inch of allied territory”.

Concerning Wagner’s relocation and training of the Belarusian army, Nato was “closely monitoring all military activities inside Belarus”, said Oana Lungescu, Nato’s spokeswoman. “We do not see any direct or imminent military threat posed by Wagner mercenaries to our allies, but we remain vigilant.”

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The European Commission said Minsk’s decision to hold army drills close to the Suwałki Gap and its EU borders was “not a surprise” and that “these military exercises need to be seen in [the] context of what Russia is doing in Ukraine ... trying to flex the muscles, trying to intimidate the neighbours”.

The EU has issued seven rounds of sanctions against Belarus, and member states last week agreed to an export ban on goods such as firearms, ammunition and products related to space and aviation.

Ahead of a fiercely contested Polish national election this autumn, the rightwing government in Warsaw has played up the need to guarantee national security against not only Russia but also its staunch ally Belarus.

Last week, Warsaw accused Minsk of sending two helicopters into Polish airspace, which were flying “at a very low height, hard to intercept by radar”, the Polish defence ministry said. Minsk denied the incident.

Polish officials have also ramped up fears of a hybrid war and a repeat of the events of 2021, when Belarus lured tens of thousands of migrants from Middle Eastern countries to take direct flights to Minsk, only to then send them to the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

So far this year, there have been 19,000 attempted illegal crossings of the Polish-Belarusian border, up from fewer than 16,000 for all of 2022, the chief commander of the Polish border guards said during a news conference on Monday. Commander Tomasz Praga described the situation as “another stage of the hybrid war”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023