WARSAW, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Fighters from Russia’s private Wagner mercenary force are being moved close to NATO’s eastern flank to destabilise the military alliance, Poland’s prime minister said on Thursday.
Wagner soldiers have begun training with the Belarus national army, prompting Poland to start moving more than 1,000 troops closer to the border.
“We need to be aware that the number of provocations will rise,” Mateusz Morawiecki said after meeting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda in eastern Poland.
The politicians met in the Suwalki Gap, a sparsely populated but strategically important area of Polish territory between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad that joins the Baltic states to other NATO members.
Belarus allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to use its territory as a launch pad for the Ukraine invasion, but has not committed its own troops to the war.