Polish SOF guarded Ukrainian delegation at talks in Belarus at start of full-scale invasion – media

This was reported on Tuesday, March 14, by the Polish newspaper Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

The article reports that the Ukrainian delegation, led by Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, was flown to Belarus by an S-70i Black Hawk helicopter belonging to the aviation group of the GROM military unit, and the Ukrainian delegation was guarded by operators of the Commando military unit from Lubliniec, who had been cooperating with Ukrainian special forces long before the full-scale war.

From the Polish side, the flights of Ukrainian officials to Brest were supervised by the then head of the Prime Minister's Office, Michał Dworczyk, and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marcin Przydacz.

In turn, the flights of the Ukrainian delegation and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich to Ankara for the talks were supervised by Jakub Kumoch, then a minister in the Polish president's office. Kumoch, who is fluent in Turkish and was Poland's ambassador to Turkey, accompanied the Ukrainians and Abramovich to Ankara.

"In early March, it was not clear whether the Ukrainians who were flying to Belarus for the talks could be sure of their return. The Polish security service gave certain guarantees that they would return unharmed," one of the participants in those events told DGP on condition of anonymity.

The military personnel who participated in the flights confirmed to DGP that the risk of incidents was calculated during the operation. It was also analyzed how to respond to a scenario in which there would be some kind of threat to soldiers from a NATO country.

The interlocutor of the Polish edition claimed that the reason for Poland's involvement in the negotiations was the hope that the Russians, seeing the strength of the Ukrainian resistance, "will start talking for real." "After the first talks, it became clear that this was an illusion," he added.

A source of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna claims that during the talks in Brest, the Russians suggested to Defense Minister Reznikov that Ukraine should announce its surrender. The newspaper adds that the head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry allegedly "sent the Russians in the direction of a Russian warship."

"The benefit was that the delegations informed us about the situation on the fronts. In addition, as a result of these negotiations, Abramovich's contacts appeared, which later helped in the exchange of prisoners of war from Azovstal for Russians. He himself was probably fighting for his life. He wanted to stay in the West and at the same time not endanger himself in the face of Putin," the source added.

• On March 12, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that his government would soon make public documents on Russian influence on MEPs.