MINSK, August 31. /TASS/. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko dismissed demands by Poland and the Baltic states that the Wagner Private Military Company withdraw from the former Soviet republic as ungrounded and foolish.

Addressing a Security Council meeting, Lukashenko said: "They (Poland and the Baltic countries - TASS) <...> are already demanding that they (Wagner PMC fighters - TASS) immediately leave Belarus. Meanwhile, they have been increasing their defense budgets and deploying large military units to our borders. The pretext is simple: there should not be a single foreign serviceman either in Poland, Lithuania or any other Baltic state. Then, we, too, can complain about the presence of foreign soldiers here. Otherwise, these are ungrounded and foolish demands, not even requests or proposals," the BelTA news agency quoted the Belarusian leader as saying.

Lukashenko accused Polish and Baltic leaders of deliberately inciting hysteria over the presence of Wagner fighters in his republic.

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski announced at a news conference following a meeting with his Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian counterparts on Monday that Warsaw had addressed Minsk with a demand that the Wagner group immediately leave the territory of Belarus. Poland and the Baltic states will close the border with Belarus and all border checkpoints in the event of a major incident, he warned.

The State Secretary of Belarus’ Security Council, Alexander Volfovich, has dismissed as false any speculations to the effect that his country poses a threat to its neighbors by hosting a Wagner detachment on its territory.

Earlier the Belarusian Defense Ministry reported that Wagner fighters, who had arrived in the republic, were deployed in a camp near Osipovichi, Mogilyov Region. The defense agency said servicemen of Belarus’ Special Operations Forces together with the Wagner PMC fighters had conducted combat training tasks at the Brest training ground near the Belarusian-Polish border.