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Warsaw and Kyiv’s agriculture ministers were to hold emergency talks on Wednesday as Polish farmers blockaded border crossings with Ukraine in a renewed dispute over grain imports.
Protesters at six road crossings have blocked or disrupted the passage of about 7,000 trucks waiting to enter Poland from Ukraine and some 2,500 seeking to travel in the other direction. The demonstrations have also disrupted Ukrainian imports entering Poland via rail.
Ukraine’s border queue registration site estimates that the trucks could be forced to wait for between 13 days and two months to cross, which could return the border to a similar crisis situation to late last year when protesting Polish hauliers blockaded crossings for more than two months.
The agriculture protests boiled over on Tuesday when some Polish farmers spilled Ukrainian grain from waiting freight trains, sparking outrage in Kyiv.
Oleksiy Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry, accused the protesters of being “out of control”, while the country’s ambassador to Poland called for Polish police to punish the farmers involved in acts of sabotage against food exports critical to the country’s war against Russia.
But Poland’s new coalition government has instead urged Ukraine to use Wednesday’s talks at an undisclosed location to offer new guarantees that its food exports do not undermine Polish agriculture.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has sought to improve relations with Kyiv that were strained last year under the previous administration, and offered full support for its war effort, but without upsetting farmers and other domestic economic interests.
Tusk’s unwieldy coalition contains politicians who represent farmers, including Michał Kołodziejczak, the secretary of state for agriculture who founded the Agrounia farming movement. Protests that included Agrounia prompted the former Polish government to introduce a unilateral import ban on Ukrainian grain last April, in violation of EU common trade policy.
Kołodziejczak told broadcaster Polsat on Tuesday that “we don’t want to silence the protests, we just want to solve the problem”. He said Poland was ready to introduce further restrictions on Ukrainian food exports and that “the ball is in Ukraine’s court”.
He also warned Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy against any retaliatory measures. “Is President Zelenskyy threatening us with an embargo on products from Poland? In the situation Ukraine is in, does he want to do that?” Kołodziejczak said.
Zelenskyy said this week that the protests were “about politics and not grain” and that the demonstrations were “outright mocking” of Ukrainians working to keep their economy afloat under Russian shelling.
Ukraine relies heavily on its western borders for travel and trade, with commercial and cargo flights suspended and its ports blocked. Passenger cross-border traffic was also seriously disrupted on Tuesday by Poland’s nationwide farming protest, although cars were allowed to cross again on Wednesday morning.
At one farmers’ protest near Poland’s border with the Czech Republic, a farmer flew a Soviet Union flag from his tractor and a sign seeking help from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Poland’s interior minister later said the pro-Russia protester would be prosecuted.
The farmers’ dispute is the latest disruption to trade over the Poland-Ukraine border. Thousands of trucks were forced to queue at border crossings between the two countries late last year because of a blockade by Polish truckers, backed by farmers, to complain about unfair competition from Ukrainian drivers. Tusk’s government got the truckers to end their protest in January.
The Polish farmers are seeking to end duty-free food imports from Ukraine, as well as remove EU climate change limitations on the usage of pesticides and fertilisers.
Brussels agreed to set caps on Ukrainian imports of poultry, meat and sugar from June in response to farming protests that have also taken place in a dozen other EU countries.
But Kyiv claims Poland’s latest demands are unjustified because Ukraine is sticking to an earlier agreement to verify that grain exports transit Poland rather than flood its domestic market.
“All wagons are inspected by Polish authorities at the border and sealed,” Ukraine’s railways company said in a statement on Tuesday. “This makes it impossible for Ukrainian grain to enter the Polish market.”
The protests in Poland come as farmers across Europe have taken to the streets to voice anger about a range of issues. Complaints include that they are not being paid enough for their output, that green rules are too burdensome, and that they face unfair competition from imports that do not obey the same quality standards.
In France, farmers have rekindled protests in recent days despite the government making a series of pledges a month ago to address their concerns. French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Wednesday unveiled more concessions to try to get ahead of protests expected to intensify on Saturday when the annual farm fair starts in Paris.
Additional reporting by Leila Abboud in Paris
