“I have demanded explanations as to who is responsible for what happened,” Mariusz Błaszczak wrote on Twitter.
He said the man had earlier tendered his resignation from the army.
Meanwhile, Stanisław Żaryn, the spokesman for Poland’s security services, declined to comment on the case “until the facts are clear,” the state PAP news agency reported.
The statements followed media reports that a Polish soldier had defected to Belarus.
On Friday morning, the Belarusian State Border Committee announced that a Polish soldier had applied for asylum across the border.
Poland’s Army Command on Friday confirmed the disappearance of a soldier a day earlier from an artillery regiment, saying the man had been on duty near the border villages of Narewka and Siemianówka and Lake Siemianowskie.
An extensive search operation was ongoing, according to military officials.
Meanwhile, authorities in Belarus named the Polish soldier as "25-year-old Emil Czeczko," and published photographs from his social media accounts, according to the PAP news agency.
The Belarusian State Border Committee said the man had been detained by a border patrol on Thursday afternoon in Belarus’ Grodno district. It claimed the soldier said he disagreed with Poland’s policy regarding a migration crisis on the two countries' shared border, the Polish state news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: polskieradio24.pl, PAP