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.”

  • kescusay@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Ah, I see he’s considering doing the “fuck around” stage. He’ll discover that the “find out” stage is mandatory after that.

    • TornadoRex@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      According to the U.S. military, the presence of U.S. special operations personnel in the targeted base elicited a response by coalition aircraft, including AC-130 gunships, F-22 Raptor and F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper unmanned combat aerial vehicles, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and B-52 bombers.[6][14][7] Nearby American artillery batteries, including an M142 HIMARS, shelled Syrian forces as well.[14]

      Holy shit

      • InverseParallax@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Casualties:

        United States: None 1 SDF fighter wounded

        Syrian claim: 55 killed
        U.S. claim: Approximately 100 killed
        SOHR claim: 68 killed
        Unofficial Russian claims: 80-100 killed, 200 wounded

        This was Wagner, so I don’t think this is as threatening as Luka does.

    • yata@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      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 taunting Poland.

    • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      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?

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Invading Poland is an interesting strategy that I’m sure has never been tried before. Let’s see if it’s successful.

  • JeffCraig@citizensgaming.comEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Once again, Lukashenko assumes that the rest of the world is as shitty and weak as Belarus and Russia. Wagner may be able to get to Moscow, but they would be utterly demolished the second they closed the border.

  • scripthook@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I wouldn’t be surprised if they start sending Wagner into Poland for special operations but claim it’s a private military in order to provoke NATO from initiating article 5. This way they can blame NATO for starting WW3