Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko wants to know the true reason why 17,000 Polish troops are on the border with Belarus. According to Sputnik, Poland kicked off a large-scale military operation along the border with Belarus on Aug. 1, ostensibly to secure the frontier in the face of what Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz characterized as a migrant-fueled “hybrid war” against Warsaw. The officially-stated aim of the deployment is said to fight illegal migrant flows in a dispute with Belarus that goes back to 2021.
But Operation “Safe Podlasie,” as it is called, was kicked off simultaneously with Operation Eastern Aurora, a NATO mission ostensibly meant to secure Polish airspace “in the face of unpredictable Russian actions,” thus potentially betraying Warsaw’s true intentions and rationale for the troop buildup.
