EU and NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia may jointly decide to shut their borders with Russian ally Belarus in case of "serious incidents involving the Wagner Group" along the three countries' borders with Belarus. That's according to remarks made by Poland's Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski on Thursday (July 27) during a visit to the border region between the two countries.

Last week, NATO member Poland decided to move military units to the eastern part of the country after Wagner mercenaries began training Belarusian special forces just a few kilometers from its border, the Reuters news agency reported.

The border area is also a part of a highly active migration route.

Interior Minister Kaminski said in reaction to these recent development that if incidents involving the Wagner mercenary group should incur along the volatile borders of Poland, Lithuania or Latvia with Belarus, "we undoubtedly will take action together."

"I do not exclude that if we decide that this is the right answer at the moment, it will lead to the complete isolation of Belarus," Kaminski added.

Sabre-rattling along the EU's eastern borders

Russian President Vladimir Putin shortly thereafter accused Poland of having plans to seize territory in the western regions of Ukraine. Putin also said that any aggression against Belarus, whose ruler Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Putin, would be considered an attack on Russia, according to Reuters.

In early June, Putin had also announced that some of Russia's short-range tactical nuclear weapons would be moved into Belarus.

These latest developments follow the arrival of thousands of Wagner troops in Belarus after last month's failed Wagner rebellion in Russia, which prompted a series of regional security concerns.

Poland meanwhile denies having any territorial ambitions in Belarus nor Ukraine, and has been an important refuge for opponents of Lukashenko. Moreover, the Polish government has become one of Kyiv's staunchest supporters since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Against the background of Putin's rhetoric, Poland has started to bolster its border security, sending 500 police forces as well as 5,000 border guards and 2,000 soldiers to its eastern border earlier this month.

Fences make good neighbors?

In addition to Interior Minister Kaminski, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Minister of Defense Mariusz Błaszczak also visited the border area on Thursday.

"This is why Polish troops are present in our country's east, this is why new army units are being formed in its east ... to prevent Russia from deciding to enter Poland," said Blaszczak while visiting the border village of Polowce.

Deputy Prime Minister Kaczynski, who's also chairman of the ruling conservative Law and Justice party, said Poland would do everything it could to "repel provocations or aggression with ease."

According to the news agency dpa, Kaczynski also blamed Lukashenko and Putin for the rise in ongoing irregular border crossings on the 400-kilometer-long Polish-Belarusian border, calling these an "attack" on Poland.

Kaczynski and many other Polish and EU politicians have accused the two strongmen of facilitating these border breaches in a bid to destabilize the EU's eastern flank by flying in people from the Middle East and Africa and attempting to push them across the border. Belarus and Russia have repeatedly denied these claims.

However, a recent investigation by Balkan news platform Balkan Insight found that most migrants along the border fly into Russia before starting their journey toward the Belarusian capital Minsk, from where they generally contact a second smuggler to get them across the border into Poland.

Kaczynski added that this is why Poland will continue to fortify its border with Belarus, where a 5.5-meter-high fence has been built since 2022, now covering close to half of the entire border between the two nations.

According to Reuters, road traffic between Poland and Belarus has also been curbed since February amid worsening relations between the two countries. Poland also shares a border with Russia's exclave Kaliningrad to its north and crossings there have been closed.

Deaths outside the EU's external borders

Despite the fence, the border closures and other measures, authorities registered more than 16,000 irregular attempts to cross the Polish border since the beginning of this year, Prime Minister Morawiecki said on Twitter on Thursday.

Since May 2021, thousands of migrants have been trying to reach Poland, Lithuania and Latvia via Belarus, sparking a humanitarian crisis among those who remained stranded along the EU external border, who -- sometimes for weeks --would be exposed to freezing weather conditions.

Grupa Granica, an NGO network monitoring the situation of migrants at the Polish-Belarusian border, says that at least 37 migrants have died in the border region since August 2021.

In April, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said at least 16 people were seriously hurt after attempting to cross the barbed-wire border fence.

High level of irregular border crossings continues

However, the business of smuggling migrants across the Belarusian-Polish border continues to thrive nevertheless "despite round-the-clock border patrols" and the growing border fence, according to BIRN.

The Polish border force told BIRN that between 100 and 200 irregular crossing attempts would take place on a daily basis in late spring and early summer this year, adding that on July 27 alone, nearly 300 migrants tried to enter Poland this way.

However, there has also been criticism against Poland in the context of the ongoing situation in the border region: Migrants' rights advocates said recently that Polish security forces were illegally hindering a group of migrants from executing their right of seeking asylum.

Grupa Granica claims that these migrants cannot return into Belarus, where the authoritarian country's border guards threaten them with violence.

Poland, along with Latvia and Lithuania, has also been criticized for employing illegal pushbacks and other human rights violations against migrants along the border.

Read more: Barbed wire borders increase in Europe

with Reuters, dpa, AP