MOD: Poland to move further 10,000 soldiers to Belarus border

"About 10,000 soldiers will be on the border, of which 4,000 will directly support the Border Guard and 6,000 will be in the reserve," the minister said in an interview for public radio.

"We move the army closer to the border with Belarus to scare away the aggressor so that it does not dare to attack us," Błaszczak added.

Deputy interior minister Maciej Wąsik said on Wednesday that Poland would send 2,000 additional troops to its frontier with Belarus.

Poland has worried increasingly about the border area since hundreds of battle-hardened Wagner mercenaries arrived in Belarus last month at the invitation of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarus continues its military exercises near the border this week, and President Alexander Lukashenko has said several times that he was restraining Wagner fighters who want to attack Poland.

Poland has also seen an increase in the number of mainly Middle Eastern and African migrants trying to cross the border in recent months.

The head of the Border Guard, Tomasz Praga, said earlier this week that 19,000 people have tried to cross the Polish-Belarusian border illegally this year, up from 16,000 last year.

Minister Błaszczak also informed on Thursday that Poland will accept Germany's offer to keep three of their Patriot units on loan by the end of the year.

"By that time we will have been ready to replace them with Polish Patriots," he added.

Germany has offered to extend the deployment of three Patriot air defence units in Poland until the end of 2023, the defence ministry in Berlin said on Tuesday (August 8).

"An extension beyond the end of 2023 is not foreseen," the ministry said in a statement, adding that some of Germany's Patriot units were needed for use by NATO's quick reaction response force in 2024, while others had to undergo maintenance.

Together with three Patriot air defence units, some 300 German soldiers have been based in the Polish town of Zamość, about 50 km (31 miles) from the Ukrainian border, since the start of the year to protect the southern town and its crucial railway link to Ukraine.

The deployment was triggered by a stray Ukrainian missile that struck the Polish village of Przewodów in the region last November, in an incident that raised fears of the war in Ukraine spilling over the border.