Arnoldas Abramavicius told journalists on Friday: "The discussions are real. The possibility of closing the border exists."
Valdemar Doveiko/PAP

The deputy interior minister of Lithuania has announced that his country and Poland could jointly decide to shut their borders with Belarus, a close ally of Russia.

Arnoldas Abramavicius told journalists on Friday: “The discussions are real. The possibility of closing the border exists.”

He said that his ministry had been informed that representatives of the Polish government on Thursday met in Krynki, a town located in the Podlaskie province which runs along the border with Belarus, to assess the current situation.

The deputy minister also pointed out that there were currently about 1,200 Wagner Group mercenaries in Belarus and that the vast majority were at a training ground in Osipovichi, close to the Polish border.

In the opinion of Abramavicius, the presence of the Wagner Group in the area “does not pose a military threat to Poland, but the possibility of provocation does exist.”

On July 19, Poland decided to move military units to its east after Wagner mercenaries began training Belarusian special forces a few miles from its border.