The Russian paramilitary group Wagner is reported to have recruited in two NATO countries, Poland and Latvia. This comes at a time when the group’s existence poses a threat to the Western military alliance.
In Poland, state media reported that stickers bearing the Wagner Group logo had been distributed in Warsaw and Krakow which read in English: “We are here-join us.” The sticker reportedly contained a QR code that redirected to a Russian website about paramilitary groups.
Apart from the stickers, Warsaw also detained two Russian citizens accused of spreading “propaganda” related to the group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Meanwhile, in Latvia, the Latvian State Security Service (VDD) told Newsweek that the Wagner Group has also started recruiting in its country. This was done by “direct and indirect” invitations on social media networks for residents to join the paramilitary outfit.
“VDD has not detected ‘Wagner’ recruitment stickers similar to those found in Poland or other propaganda materials from the Wagner group in public spaces in Latvia,” the secret service said, quoted Wednesday (16/8/2023).
Baltic news aggregator Delfi reports that citizens and non-citizens in Latvia are prohibited from serving in the armed forces or any other country’s military organizations that threaten the country’s national security. Doing so is punishable by up to four years in prison.
Wagner currently concentrated his forces on the territory of Belarus, which is a neighbor of Poland. This happened after the group failed to carry out an uprising in Russia on June 24.
In the Minsk region, the troops have participated in several exercises with the national army of the Russian-allied nation in an area near the Polish border. Prigozhin said the exercise was aimed at making the Belarusian army one of the strongest armies on earth.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko also joked with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Wagner had started to stress him out because they wanted to go to the West for an “excursion”.
Meanwhile, several NATO countries carried out several defense reinforcements. Warsaw has signed a contract to buy two airborne early warning aircraft from Sweden, Saab 340 AEW-300, for about 600 million Swedish krona (Rp 868 billion).
Polish Prime Minister (PM) Mateusz Morawiecki earlier said that around 100 Wagner fighters in Belarus had approached the border with Poland, specifically the strategically sensitive area known as the Suwalki Pass.
The Suwalki Pass is a strip of land along the Polish and Lithuanian border that separates Belarus in the east from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in the west.
Source : CNBC
