the arrival of Wagner’s mercenaries in Belarus tenses the Ukrainians on the other side of the border

With the aftermath of the abortive mutiny of Yevgeny Prigojine and his Wagner mercenaries in Russia, Belarus finds itself at the center of attention: it is its self-proclaimed president Alexander Lukashenko who played the mediator, and who accepted to to welcome Wagner’s fighters and their leader to its territory. This leading role of Belarus is a challenge in Ukraine, particularly in the Chernihiv region, near this border again seen as a threat by the Ukrainians.

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All you have to do is approach less than thirty kilometers from the border for the Ukrainian soldiers to make it clear to you: the area is very controlled, closed to journalists. On the main road coming from Belarus, the inhabitants of the villages remember that it was here that the Russian tanks and troops arrived on February 24, 2022 and the region was occupied for more than a month. “Of course there is a threat, the Russians can come back at any time”, releases a border guard to us. She says that the Russians launch combat drones almost every day from the other side of the border, on the villages that franceinfo has crossed.

Many Ukrainian soldiers at the border

In the big city of Chernihiv, Vadim, who is waiting for the bus, wants to be more reassuring. Of course, “he follows the news like everyone else” about these Wagner mercenaries who are going to settle on the Belarusian side, of course “that does not reassure him”but he says do “trust in Ukrainian soldiers guarding the border”. “Last year when the Russians came”he said, “it was the civilians who tried to stop them”, without success. Now the army is there, we meet a lot of soldiers in the area, so Vadim assures us that neither the Russians nor the Belarusians will be able to cross the famous border so easily.