2023-08-29 12:35:45
after the failed riot on June 24 against the Russian Defense Ministry, the group of mercenaries Wagner exchanged Saint Petersburg for Minsk and moved to belarus. They were allowed to continue to exist outside the country and in practice were forgiven for rebellion. However, the group known for its brutal methods generates nerves in the closest countries, as is the case with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania y Poland.
Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski asserted last Monday that they have asked “the Lukashenko regime to expel the Wagner group from Belarus immediately”, after a meeting with his counterparts from the Baltic countries. the belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko He mediated during the Wagnerite rebellion in June and offered his territory as a new headquarters for the mercenaries, who he supported logistically and even gave them an old military base to use it as a center of operations.
According to sources from the same government of Minskabout 10,000 soldiers de Wagner are in its territory. Although they lost most of their leadership after the alleged plane crash that killed both the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin such as Dmitri Utkinhis number two, it is expected that trusted men of the Russian president Vladimir Putin go on to lead “the musicians” and that Wagner continues to be an important Russian asset on the African continent.
ex-convicts and migrants
One of the most remembered images of Wagner is of his recruitment in Russian prisons, where, under the permission of the Kremlinrecruited convicts from different parts of Russia in exchange for them fighting for a few months in Ukraine under the command of Prigozhin. In addition to the pardon, regardless of the remaining years of their sentence, they were also offered salaries above the average in Russia. Sources from activists for the rights of convicts pointed out that in this way they recruited about 50,000 incarcerated men.
This convict origin worries Poland, which recalls that among Wagner’s men there are “some who have been released from prisons with the promise of fighting in the Ukraine, and now they are very demoralized and accused of crimes against humanity“.
Prigozhin’s press service releases another video showing him & a bunch of Wagner merc prisoner-recruits who apparently completed their 6-month contracts & won pardons. “I needed your criminal talents to kill the enemy in war, but they’re not needed now [back in Russia].” Be good! pic.twitter.com/SeFOVCfSPt
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) January 17, 2023
In addition to the presence of mercenaries, Poland also denounces the use that Belarus makes of migrantswhom he would use as a destabilization tool against warsaw. According to Polish sources this year 19,000 people from different countries have tried to enter Polish territory from Belarus this year, more than in all of 2022, which was 16,000.
In November 2021 Minsk pressured the European Union (EU) bringing between 10,000 and 15,000 people to whom he promised to be able to cross the frontera, mainly from Iraq and Syria. Attracted by the promises and by the facilities offered to them to reach Belarus, they found hotels full and some had to sleep on the street or in the forest in sub-zero temperatures. In addition to the cold, they encountered Poland’s refusal to let them pass into European territory, which used force to prevent them from crossing.
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