Yesterday Lulashenko was in St. Petersburg and said something along the lines of "the Wagner mercenaries want to go for an escursion to Warsaw, I'm trying to stop them".
Monday there was a news that Wagner will have joint exercises with Belarus military on the border with Poland
A week ago Putin warned Poland to not attack Belarus
Nearly a month ago after Wagner was exiliated to Belarus, polish Deputy PM said they will be strengthening the border security with Belarus ( because of Wagner )
In short the tension between Poland and Belarus+Russia is increasing, and if Russia really wants to invade Poland, the Suwalki gap is the most obvious place
Putin also said 4 days ago: "The western territories of present-day Poland are a gift from Stalin to the Poles, have our friends in Warsaw forgotten about this? We will remind you." [1].
So, I wonder what he's doing. Trying to start a conflict in a different spot because he needs some wins but his troops are in a quagmire/losing ground in Ukraine? Trying to bluff to see if NATO will actually respond to an invasion of Poland? I wonder if the NATO leaders is more comfortable doing bombing runs against Belarussian troops, because hey, they're not Russian, so it's not yet a Russia vs NATO conflict?
Apparently he's bombing grain depots in Odesa to starve the poorer regions of the world and expecting it will flood Europe with refugees... which may work very well indeed, and causing a further lurch to the right in Europe.
> Apparently he's bombing grain depots in Odesa to starve the poorer regions of the world and expecting it will flood Europe with refugees... which may work very well indeed, and causing a further lurch to the right in Europe.
In theory, but we are talking about a chain of events which will lead several years into the future. No grain today does not mean that people will start moving tomorrow.
> Trying to bluff to see if NATO will actually respond to an invasion of Poland?
Possibly. They might try a "little green men" scenario where these aren't Russian or Belorussian forces, but "Wagner" forces.
Darker possibility: after the mutiny, Wagner are extremely dangerous to Putin. But they're also too dangerous to move against directly. They've been parked in Belarus to give the sides some distance. Maybe they're going to be ordered into Poland to get rid of them (killed or captured), making them NATO's problem.
(What was the old Mission Impossible line about "if you are caught, we will deny any knowledge of you and your actions"?)
> Possibly. They might try a "little green men" scenario where these aren't Russian or Belorussian forces, but "Wagner" forces.
NATO would not assume those are "separatists" -- which is the excuse they used in Ukraine c. 2014.
> Maybe they're going to be ordered into Poland to get rid of them (killed or captured), making them NATO's problem.
Wagner is an organ of the Russian military and always has been; there is no "maybe they'll go into Poland to get rid of them" because that would trigger NATO article 5 and basically WW3.
> (What was the old Mission Impossible line about "if you are caught, we will deny any knowledge of you and your actions"?)
Plausible deniability does not work this way. No one will pretend that "maybe they're someone else, cuz, like, they denied it" -- if anything happens in Poland it will be 100% because Moscow ok'd it happening.