Following his provocative visit to Kiev earlier this week, U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace turned up yesterday at a military training in northeastern Poland where he met with Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak. Blaszczak told reporters afterwards that a contingent of British military engineers will help strengthen the Polish-Belarusian border. “Our border is and will be tight; we will ensure Poland’s security … with the support of British troops,” Blaszczak said, reported Polish Radio. “A company of British soldiers will be deployed to serve alongside Polish soldiers as soon as possible, hopefully later this month,” he stated. Poland plans to build a solid barrier along the Belarus frontier, crowned with barbed wire and fitted with electronic surveillance devices which is expected to be ready by mid-2022.
In Warsaw, Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk said that Poland has the support of all of its allies regarding the crisis on the border with Belarus but singled out the U.K. for special mention. It was Britain, he stressed, that was “the first country to offer us very concrete help. We very much appreciate it and are really grateful to our allies.” He also said that “despite leaving the European Union, Britain remains our ally in the North Atlantic Pact and I think that it should be viewed from this point of view.”
