{"id":36613,"date":"2023-08-01T22:10:48","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T22:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=36613"},"modified":"2023-08-01T22:10:51","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T22:10:51","slug":"warsaw-sends-troops-to-border-accusing-belarus-of-violating-its-airspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/08\/01\/warsaw-sends-troops-to-border-accusing-belarus-of-violating-its-airspace\/","title":{"rendered":"Warsaw sends troops to border, accusing Belarus of violating its airspace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Poland has rushed troops to its eastern border after accusing\u00a0Belarus, Russia\u2019s closest ally, of violating its airspace with military helicopters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Belarusian military denied any such violation and accused\u00a0Poland, a Nato member and one of Ukraine\u2019s most fervent backers in its conflict with Russia, of inventing the accusation to justify a buildup of its troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belarus leader\u00a0Alexander Lukashenko\u00a0had earlier taunted Poland over the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries near their joint border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poland\u2019s defence ministry said it was sending \u201cadditional forces and resources, including combat helicopters\u201d. It said it had informed Nato of the border violation and\u00a0Belarus\u2019s charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires had been summoned to provide an explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Polish military initially denied any border violation had occurred but later, after consultations, said the intrusion took place \u201cat a very low height, hard to intercept by radar\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belarus\u2019s defence ministry, writing on Telegram, said Warsaw had changed its mind about the incident \u201capparently after consulting its overseas masters\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis statement was not backed up by data from\u00a0Poland,\u201d it said. \u201cThe Belarusian defence ministry views it in the manner of an \u2018old wives\u2019 tale\u2019 and notes there were no border violations by Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People living around the eastern Polish village of Bia\u0142owie\u017ca, close to the Belarus border, shared accounts on social media of what they said were border violations before the defence ministry issued its statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belarus allowed the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to use its territory as a launch pad for the Ukraine invasion, but Lukashenko has not committed his own troops to the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former Soviet state has a long history of animosity with Poland, as does Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week,\u00a0Putin accused Poland of harbouring territorial ambitions on Belarus\u00a0and said it would consider any attack on its neighbour as an attack on itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lithuanian<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Earlier on Tuesday, Lukashenko mockingly told Poland it should thank him for keeping in check Wagner mercenaries now stationed in Belarus after an abortive mutiny against the Kremlin last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An unspecified number of the Wagner fighters have since moved to Belarus and begun training Lukashenko\u2019s army. Poland had already started moving more than 1,000 of its own troops closer to the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lukashenko joked at a meeting with Putin last month that some of the fighters were keen to press into Poland and \u201cgo on a trip to Warsaw and Rzesz\u00f3w\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State news agency Belta quoted him on Tuesday as saying that Polish people \u201cshould pray that we\u2019re holding on to [the Wagner fighters] and providing for them. Otherwise, without us, they would have seeped through and smashed up Rzesz\u00f3w and Warsaw in no small way. So they shouldn\u2019t reproach me, they should say thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rzesz\u00f3w is a city near the Ukrainian border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, Poland\u2019s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said a group of 100 Wagner fighters had moved closer to the Belarusian city of Grodno, near the Polish border, describing the situation as \u201cincreasingly dangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poland has rushed troops to its eastern border after accusing\u00a0Belarus, Russia\u2019s closest ally, of violating its airspace with military helicopters. The Belarusian military denied any such violation and accused\u00a0Poland, a Nato member and one of Ukraine\u2019s most fervent backers in its conflict with Russia, of inventing the accusation to justify a buildup of its troops. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":36614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,8196,8217,5304,5463,9204,9331,8982,10767,7396,5252,1152,11128,9833,9477,5572,10291,4802,11973,837,3805,3174,71,3457,5217,5349,9178,5180,5555,6348,694,9318,5251,10395],"class_list":["post-36613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-alexander-lukashenko","tag-army","tag-attack","tag-belarus","tag-border","tag-city","tag-combat","tag-conflict","tag-data","tag-invasion","tag-kremlin","tag-masters","tag-meeting","tag-mercenaries","tag-military","tag-mutiny","tag-nato","tag-one","tag-poland","tag-president","tag-prime-minister","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-social-media","tag-troops","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-us","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-wagner","tag-war","tag-warsaw"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36615,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36613\/revisions\/36615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}