Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruslan Yesin said on 8 September that the Polish government is trying to provoke a "new split" within the Union of Poles in Belarus (SPB) by extending support to the old SPB leadership that was replaced last month, Belapan reported.

Yesin was commenting on the Polish Foreign Ministry's statement earlier this month, in which Warsaw charged that the election of a new SPB leadership in August took place at a convention orchestrated by Belarusian special services. The Polish ministry said that Warsaw will back the SPB's leaders elected at a convention in March and will devise ways of efficient cooperation with the Polish ethnic community in Belarus. "It is unclear how a governmental agency, moreover that of a foreign country, may recognize or not recognize the leadership of a nongovernmental organization in a neighboring country," Yesin noted. Meanwhile, former SPB leader Andzelika Borys, who was replaced in August, met with EU officials and lawmakers in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on 8 September. Borys was accompanied by Donald Tusk, deputy speaker of the Polish parliament and a frontrunner in Poland's presidential race.