As the two-day Brussels summit of EU leaders was to kick off on Thursday, June 29th, Latvian Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš told reporters that the presence of Wagner PMC members in neighboring Belarus merits continued surveillance.
After Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s botched mutiny attempt last weekend, the disgraced leader struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin which granted him exile in Belarus.
“We keep a very wary eye on everything that occurs in Belarus with [Wagner chief Yevgeny] Prigozhin there and an unknown number of very trained and skilled fighters who presumably will be joining him,” Kariņš said upon his arrival.
“That does potentially pose a threat,” he continued, but it “would probably not be a frontal military threat, but the threat of attempted infiltration into Europe for unknown purposes. So that means we need to heighten our border awareness and make sure that we can control that,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, Poland, another EU country, is floating the idea that the EU should cough up the funds necessary to strengthen border security. Poland harbors a long-held animosity towards both Belarus, with which it shares a border, and its close ally Russia.
“European solidarity means supporting countries threatened with destabilization,” Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski said that same day on Polish public radio station Trójka.
“Europe’s security is now at risk as never for many years. We border Belarus, which actively supports Russia, and we are more exposed to hybrid attacks or attempts to destabilize,” he added, a reference to allegations that Minsk has been weaponizing its border with EU member states, as it releases thousands of mostly Middle Eastern migrants to the border as a form of reprisal over the EU’s sanctions.
In light of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s Tuesday announcement that Prigozhin had arrived in his country and that a former military base had been made available for any Wagner fighters wishing to join him, security has become an equally pressing concern for Lithuanian authorities.
Vilnius is “extremely concerned about the developments in Belarus. Prigozhin is already there … I cannot say 100 percent but it is very likely that he is already there,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausèda said on Thursday, according to AFP.
The leader of the Baltic country, which will host next month’s NATO summit, repeated his call for a strengthening of NATO’s eastern flank. “The fighter groups or these serial killers (as) I call them … they could emerge in Belarus at any moment and nobody knows when they could turn against us,” he added.
On July 11th-12th, leaders from all 31 members of the transatlantic military alliance will gather in the Lithuanian capital to debate NATO’s future in a world after the invasion of Ukraine.
Bolstering its eastern border is bound to be among its foremost priorities.
