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The leader of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenko, said on Friday that he has ordered the country's prime minister to contact Poland and that he is ready for talks due to the increase in border tensions between the NATO member and Russia's ally.
Last week, Poland said two Belarusian helicopters violated its airspace and arrested a Belarusian man on suspicion of being part of a "Russian espionage ring".
Relations between Minsk and Warsaw, frozen for several years, escalated when Lukashenka allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to attack Ukraine.
Tensions escalated even more when Minsk became the new base for the mercenary group Wagner from Russia. Poland called this a threat and consequently strengthened its border defenses.
"We have to talk to the Poles. I have ordered the prime minister to contact them," Lukashenko said, according to state news agency Belta.
"We are neighbors and you can't get rid of neighbors," said the Belarusian leader.
These unusual statements of his come only a day after Warsaw announced that it will send 10,000 more troops to the border with Belarus.
"They have parliamentary elections on October 15, of course they need to escalate the situation... to show that they have properly armed [Poland]," Lukashenka emphasized.
The Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland, Pawel Jablonski, said that if the Belarusian leader "really wants to improve relations with Poland, then he can do it in a very simple way."
He called on Lukashenko to stop "attacking our border again, release more than a thousand political prisoners and [Polish-Belarusian journalist] Andrzej Poczobut, stop this hate campaign, this hybrid war against Poland."
Poland has warned of provocations involving the Wagner group, which Lukashenka is harboring after their failed coup in Russia in June.
During a visit to St. Petersburg last month, Lukashenka, sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, joked that Wagner's fighters are looking "to go to the West, they're asking for permission ... to go on a trip to Warsaw, to Rzeszow".
Thousands of Belarusians have gone to Poland after fleeing their homeland since Lukashenko took power in 1994.
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