
Concerns have grown among NATO nations after reports that members of the Wagner paramilitary group, supported by Russia, were in Belarus heading toward the border with Poland.
Since Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin's abortive mutiny in June, thousands of Wagner mercenaries have reportedly been relocating to Belarus, taking the Kremlin up on its offer for pardons in exchange for exile.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned in July that the Wagner Group could be planning a "hybrid attack" against his country after the paramilitary organization moved more than 100 troops near the Suwałki Gap—a strip of land along the Polish and Lithuanian border separating Belarus to the east from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the west.