Oleksandr Kovalenko: Polish Army Has Motivation To ‘Shred’ Prigozhin’s Henchmen
- 24.07.2023, 15:31
What awaits the “Wagnerites” if they decide to go on an “excursion” to Poland.
On Sunday, Lukashenka flew to St. Petersburg for regular “negotiations” with Putin. There, the Belarusian dictator said that he “holds back the Wagnerites who want to go on an excursion to Rzeszów and Warsaw”.
What is really behind these words of Lukashenka? The Charter97.org website talked about this with Oleksandr Kovalenko, the military-political observer of the Ukrainian group Information Resistance.
— I must say right away that I am a military-political observer, not a psychiatrist. Lukashenka said this during “negotiations” with Putin, who, let me remind you, fled Moscow when a bunch of convicts called the private military company Wagner stopped literally 200 km from the city. Putin was already in Valdai then.
All this is pure farce. Just last week, one of the Russian officials stated that the Wagner PMC could build a road to the Kaliningrad region along the Suwalki corridor, which is also absolute nonsense. Who are the “Wagnerites”? First of all, this is a hybrid format unit.
Their function is not military operations. When Wagner PMCs performed hybrid combat missions, for example, in 2014 in the Crimea, in the Donetsk region, and then in Syria, Africa, and Venezuela, they demonstrated a fairly high level of professionalism. But these were all, I emphasize, hybrid combat missions. As soon as they were thrown into a military-level operation — the attack on Bakhmut — they immediately melted. They showed absolute incompetence.
At the cost of dozens of thousands dead, wounded and captured “Wagnerites” they could not fully take control of the small town of Bakhmut in 10 months. This simply emphasizes how helpless and useless they are in matters of military operations.
The laying of the Suwalki corridor to the Kaliningrad region or the “excursion” to Rzeszów (200 km from the nearest point with Belarus) are military operations.
— What kind of operations on the border are the “Wagnerites” capable of?
— It should be noted that, taking into account the hybrid functionality of the Wagner PMC, a high level of threat of sabotage and terrorist activities remains. For example, the placement of minefields, traps and tripwires along the route of Polish border patrols in the border zone with Belarus. Here it is quite real. Everything else is nothing more than a bravura farce.
— Let's say that the “Wagnerites” decide to go on an “excursion” to Rzeszów and Warsaw. What will they encounter along the way?
— The Poles certainly will not watch the UAZ trucks and pickup trucks with Maxim machine guns pass by their posts.
The Polish army today, if we exclude the nuclear component, is the second in Europe in terms of its potential. It is second only to the UK.
In addition, the Poles, in addition to opportunities, have a rather serious motivation to “shred” all these Prigozhin’s henchmen.
If they turn up, there will be even no need to expect the activation of the fifth article of the NATO collective security treaty, but the very fact of crossing the border will be enough. The “Wagnerites” will receive a full-fledged response immediately.