Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on Tuesday taunted Poland over the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries near the NATO country's border, saying Warsaw should thank him for keeping them in check.

State news agency Belta quoted him on Tuesday as saying that the Poles “should pray that we’re holding onto (the Wagner fighters) and providing for them. Otherwise, without us, they would have seeped through and smashed up Rzeszow and Warsaw in no small way. So they shouldn’t reproach me, they should say thank you.”

  • @afraid_of_zombiesEnglish
    10•1 year ago

    I don’t feel like I understand the motivations of the players involved here. What am I missing?

    • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺English
      3•1 year ago

      you see if the Wagners are marching into Poland it is not an army and it is also not mercenarys employed by russia or belarus because mercenaries are illegal there and russia would never have done something illegal. So anyways NATO would be evily attacking them for the acts of private citizens that they had nothing to do in, so NATO is the baddies mkay?

    • @[email protected]English
      3•1 year ago

      Wagner poses a risk to Putin, and Putin is a little coward, so they have been isolated to a camp in Belarus as a sort of exile instead of him attempting a complete confrontation with them.

      Putin and Lukashenko finds a use for this (for them) unfortunate situation by using them as a threat to Poland, even though Wagner most likely plays no part at all in all of this. Helps saving the face of Putin and Lukashenko by even suggesting that this is something that Wagner would be even remotely interested in doing for them, while at the same time (seemingly) taunting Poland for the internal consumption of Russians, who perceives these sorts of emotional tantrums to be very macho and becoming of “strong men” rulers.

      There is no actual risk of Wagner entering Poland, except perhaps if they were forced at gunpoint to cross the border by the Russians.