Belarus will certainly make many attempts to infiltrate the Polish border and try to destabilise the country ahead of the elections, Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski said on Friday in an interview with the US TV broadcaster CNN.

Asked about the threats coming from Belarus amid the intrusion into Polish airspace by Belarusian training helicopters and the Russia-linked Wagner Group of mercenaries moving toward the Polish border, Jablonski said that “the threat is very real.”

“While these small groups of Wagner Group mercenaries and perhaps some other personnel will probably not immediately try to conduct a full-scale invasion, they will certainly make many attempts at infiltrating our territory, attacks on our border, also using illegal migrants,” he told CNN.

Jablonski said that the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko continues to bring groups of migrants from the Middle East to Belarus and transport them to the borders with Poland and the Baltic states.

“We are seeing now increased numbers of them, especially against Poland, because they are also willing to destabilise our country ahead of the elections. This is the game plan that they are employing very often,” he added.

On Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki met with his Lithuanian counterpart, Gitanas Nauseda, on the Polish-Lithuanian border to discuss the threats posed by the presence of Russian mercenaries in Belarus. The two met in the Suwalki Gap, which separates the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea from Belarus. They discussed the possible closure of all border crossings and complete isolation of the Lukashenko regime. According to Morawiecki, over 100 of some 4,000 Wagner mercenaries present in Belarus had moved close to the Suwalki Gap.