Mercenaries from the Wagner group have been training troops on the border with Poland for a week, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said Thursday, a statement likely to heighten tensions in an already conflict-fraught region.
The fate of the Wagner group, one of the most combat-ready units fighting for Russia in Ukraine, and its pugnacious leader Yevgeny V. Prigogine has been shrouded in mystery since the aborted coup in Russia late last month. As part of a deal to end the rebellion, the Belarusian president granted exile to Mr Prigozhin and his forces, but their whereabouts are often unclear.
Satellite images this week confirmed that a convoy of Wagner fighters had arrived at a hastily assembled camp in the Belarusian town of Asipovichi. On Wednesday, at least three Wagner-affiliated channels on Telegram published video of a man, whose silhouette and voice bore a striking resemblance to Mr Prigogine, greeting hundreds of Wagner fighters at the camp.
According to a Belarusian statement on Thursday, the country’s special operations units have been training jointly with Wagner representatives for a week at a military range near the city of Brest. That’s just three miles from Belarus’ border with NATO-member Poland and 20 miles north of the country’s border with Ukraine.
The ministry posted images showing Wagner fighters training Belarusian soldiers to operate a drone and an armored vehicle.
Polish officials did not immediately comment on the defense ministry’s statement, but President Andrzej Duda warned that the presence of Wagner’s group in Belarus “could be a potential danger” to his country and Lithuania, which shares a border with Belarus.
Ukrainian officials have tried to play down concerns about Wagner’s forces in Belarus, while saying the country’s forces are ready for any potential threat from its neighbor to the north.
After the Wagner coup, President Vladimir V. Putin awarded contracts to mercenaries with the Russian Defense Ministry, in an apparent attempt to sideline Mr Prigogine. Those who decided not to come under the leadership of the Ministry have moved to Belarus and continue to see Mr. Prigogine as their leader.
In a twilight-light video released on Wednesday, Mr. A figure believed to be Prigogine announced that Wagner fighters would remain in Belarus for some time to train his army, aiming to make it the second best army in the world.
He didn’t downplay frequent criticism of Russia’s top commanders, calling the situation on the front line in Ukraine a “disgrace” that Wagner fighters “shouldn’t be participating in.” He left open the possibility that Wagner’s forces would return to the war in Ukraine.
“We have to wait for the moment when we can fully prove ourselves,” the man says in the video, his face obscured throughout. “Perhaps we will go back to special military operations unless we are forced to humiliate ourselves and our experience,” he said, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
On Thursday, a senior Wagner commander known by the call sign “Marx,” identified as Wagner’s chief of staff, said in a post on a Wagner-affiliated channel on Telegram that the group had lost 22,000 fighters in Ukraine and an additional 40,000 wounded out of 78,000 involved in the battle. Up to 10,000 are moving to Belarus, he said. Those numbers could not be verified.
