President Duda: Prigozhin and Wagner Group in Belarus is negative signal for Poland

"The relocation of de facto Russian forces, probably in the form of the Wagner Group to Belarus, as well as the transfer of the head of the Wagner Group there, those are all very negative signals for us which we want to raise strongly with our allies," he told reporters.

Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived in Belarus on Tuesday under a deal negotiated by President Alexander Lukashenko that ended the mercenaries' mutiny in Russia on Saturday (June 24). Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wagner's fighters would be offered the choice of relocating there.

The Polish president also listed other important issues he wanted to discuss with other NATO leaders, including "enforcing the resolutions of the Madrid summit, (and) to speed up the reaction from NATO, to make NATO defence plans more efficient, (to enable) quicker relocation of soldiers, increase the strength of battalion groups that are stationed in our region of Europe, increase military resources in this region". "These are all the goals we wish to achieve," he stressed.

President Duda added that all allies were hoping the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius would "lead to the strengthening of security in our part of Europe and NATO".

"The day when the Vilnius summit will be ending, we shall already start working on the NATO summit in Washington," he said

Latvia and Lithuania called on Tuesday for NATO to strengthen its eastern borders in response to Wagner Group's relocation.

"This move needs to be assessed from a different security point of view. We have seen the capabilities of those mercenaries," Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics told reporters during a visit to Paris with Baltic counterparts.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the speed with which Wagner had advanced on Moscow - driving hundreds of kilometres in a one-day race towards the capital - showed that the defence of Baltic states should be firmed up.

"Our countries' borders are just hundreds of kilometres from that activity so it could take them 8-10 hours to suddenly appear somewhere in Belarus close to Lithuania," Landsbergis said. "It is creating a more volatile, unpredictable environment for our region."

"We need to take the defence of the Baltic region very seriously," he said.

"The events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter, and yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President (Vladimir) Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine," Stoltenberg told reporters on a visit to Lithuania's capital Vilnius on Monday (June 26).

The Baltic envoys' visit to France comes as Western powers gear up for a NATO summit next month in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Wagner's arrival in Belarus should be viewed "in light of the NATO summit and all discussions that we are having about defence, deterrence and the necessary decisions to strengthen the security of the eastern flank," said Latvia's Rinkevics.

Belarus borders NATO members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

Germany said on Monday it was ready to station a 4,000-strong army brigade in Lithuania permanently. Landsbergis told his French counterpart that Paris could help with air defences.

"France can be a valuable partner in strengthening air defence capabilities of Baltic countries," he said. "We know about French technology and it could be used as part of our deterrence strategy so that no Wagner, no Russian military would ever think to cross Baltic states' borders."