Alexander Lukashenko informs Russian President Putin that he is keeping Wagner forces in the center of the country in accordance with an agreement reached during a short-lived paramilitary mutiny in late June.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday that the Russian paramilitary group Wagner was pressuring his country to break through the border into neighboring Poland.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I will.” The Wagnerites began to strain us: “We want to go to the West. Will allow us to.’ I said why do you need to go to the West? “Well, go on an excursion to Warsaw, to Rzeszow,” Lukashenka said during a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg.
Lukashenko said he was keeping Wagner forces in the center of the country in accordance with an agreement reached during a short-lived paramilitary mutiny in late June.
Belarus does not want to resettle them near the Polish border because “they are in a bad mood,” he added.
Russia and Belarus are allies and are bound by a partnership known as the “union state”.
Last month, Lukashenko brokered a deal to end a short-lived Wagner insurgency in which its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused the Russian Defense Ministry of attacking its paramilitary fighters and announced a “March of Justice” against Moscow.
The Russian Federal Security Service called the group’s actions an “armed rebellion” and opened a criminal case against Prigozhin, while Russian President Vladimir Putin called the PMC rebellion “high treason.”
Prigozhin later returned “to avoid bloodshed” and has since moved to Belarus as part of a deal brokered by Lukashenka.
Ukrainian counteroffensive failed
During the meeting, Putin said that Ukraine’s counter-offensive “exists, but it failed,” in response to Lukashenka’s words that “there is no counter-offensive.”
Putin, who ordered a “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022, said more than 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the start of the counteroffensive last month.
For his part, Lukashenka said that more than 15 Leopard tanks and more than 20 Bradley tanks had been destroyed over the past 24 hours.
Ukrainian authorities have yet to comment on Putin and Lukashenko’s comments, and independent confirmation of their claims is difficult due to the ongoing war.
He added that plans to “dismember” Ukraine and separate the country’s western regions are “unacceptable.”
Russian officials claim that Poland is preparing plans to annex the western parts of Ukraine, but Polish officials deny this claim.
Source: AA
