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July 10, and the other Baltic States are firmly behind Ukraine’s Nato bid.
"Gathering in Vilnius for the Nato summit, you have the opportunity to make a historic decision and invite Ukraine to Nato, without delaying and without waiting for the end of the war," said the Lithuanian statement, also signed by the first head of the restored Lithuanian state, Vytautas Landsbergis.
Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said that Warsaw counts on a "clear signal" from the alliance regarding the support for Ukraine, Ukrinform wrote on July 10. Blaszczak said at a meeting with generals that Poland aims to have
a border with independent Ukraine, not with a "part of Russia".
"That's why we support Ukraine... We realise that any attempt to rebuild an
empire is evil, which the residents of Irpin and Bucha, who were killed by Russian soldiers, experienced for themselves," the minister said.
"We are counting on the fact that Nato will expand – Sweden will join the Alliance – and that Nato will give
a clear signal regarding its support
for Ukraine."
Poland says it is ready to “isolate”
Belarus to protect border
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
Poland could close its border with Belarus completely should it consider such a move a necessary response to any “serious provocation" by Minsk, Home Affairs Minister Mariusz Kaminski said on July 27.
Poland has been eyeing the 418-kilometre- long border with Belarus with extra vigilance since the relocation there of the Wagner mercenary group from Russia.
Warsaw says the border has long been the target of Belarusian provocations. In 2021, Minsk began channelling migrants from the Middle East and Africa – who were flown into Belarus
deliberately – to apply pressure on Polish border guards and military.
Poland has since built a barrier spiked with cameras and other means of electronic surveillance.
But the presence of the Wagnerites in Belarus has heightened the risks to border security now.
“We are ready for different scenarios. No green men will ever be allowed to run at our borders,” Kaminski said in Krynki,
a town just a couple of kilometres from the border with Belarus, referring to the informal description of paramilitary
groups that were instrumental in Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014. "The Wagner group are extremely dangerous mercenaries, merciless
and ruthless. They have shown in Africa, Ukraine, and the Middle East ... what they are capable of doing in the territories where they appear," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Sutno, another town near the Polish- Belarusian border, on the same day.
The government’s top figures visiting the Polish-Belarusian border are also part of the unfolding campaign ahead of the election due this autumn.
“We are the complete opposite of our predecessors who limited the Polish Armed Forces [especially] to the east of the Vistula River,” Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said in the town of Koden near the border, which he also visited on July 27.
Poland has recently relocated extra troops near the border in response to the arrival of the Wagner group following the mercenaries’ alleged coup attempt in Russia in June.
After Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February last year, Poland has become Nato’s strategic eastern outpost. Poland borders Ukraine, Russia’s ally Belarus, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.”
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