Russian mercenary forces in Belarus have shown signs of “confusion” after the death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, defusing an immediate threat to the region, Lithuania’s president said.
(Bloomberg) — Russian mercenary forces in Belarus have shown signs of “confusion” after the death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, defusing an immediate threat to the region, Lithuania’s president said.
The comments by Gitanas Nauseda mark a shift after he and other regional leaders raised the prospect of shutting their borders with Belarus following the movement of Wagner forces into the country. There is no evidence that the mercenary group is seeking to destabilize the frontier with Lithuania and Poland, both NATO members, Nauseda said.
“The situation hasn’t escalated,” Nauseda told Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT on Tuesday, saying that a complete border closure was now less urgent. “We see certain confusion within Wagner after Prigozhin’s death.”
The Lithuanian head of state and Polish leaders sounded the alarm over the threat from Wagner forces last month, after mercenaries decamped to Belarus as part of a deal with Yevgeny Prigozhin after his failed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. A senior Polish official called for the country’s “complete isolation.”
But indications have mounted, including statements from Ukrainian authorities, that mercenaries have begun to return to Russia.
Poland and the Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — agreed last week to coordinate on a plan to shut the border in the event of an armed incident or an organized influx of migrants, but stopped short of imposing a broad closure.
“If the situation becomes more complicated, we must act,” Nauseda told LRT. “If the situation remains unchanged or it stabilizes, we must act differently. No one wants to close borders purely for sporting interest.”
Still, Nauseda said “the Belarus regime is a threat” with or without a Wagner presence, because the border area has been a source of tension since 2021, when Minsk dispatched migrants, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, into Poland and the Baltic states in a bid to destabilize the region.
“The Wagner group may move to one or another direction, but Alexander Lukashenko, believe me, won’t change and his rhetoric or goals regarding NATO countries won’t change,” Nauseda said, referring to Belarus’s authoritarian leader.
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