“Not a single truck” is ready to cross the blockade, Kiev’s border guards have mentioned
Protesting Polish farmers blockaded all six border crossings to Ukraine on Sunday, based on Kiev’s border safety company. The transfer comes after months of protests by Poland’s agricultural staff in opposition to low cost Ukrainian imports threatening their livelihoods.
“As of this morning, greater than 2,400 cargo automobiles are ready in queues” in any respect six crossing factors, State Border Guard Service spokesman Andrey Demchenko instructed Ukraine’s ‘European Pravda’ information website.
“Not a single truck is crossing the border in the direction of Poland, as a result of they don’t seem to be allowed by,” Demchenko mentioned, including that automobiles, vans, and buses are being allowed to cross as regular.
Polish farmers have been blockading the border since November, in protest of an EU rule permitting Ukrainian farmers to promote their grain within the bloc with out paying tariffs or abiding by Brussels’ stringent rules. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk mentioned earlier this week that Warsaw was in talks with Kiev about briefly shutting the border, though the Ukrainian aspect denied his declare.
Polish authorities “wish to assist Ukraine, however we will’t enable this assist to deliver very adverse results to our residents. We’re always on the lookout for an answer that can shield the Polish market from being flooded with clearly cheaper [Ukrainian] agricultural merchandise,” Tusk mentioned on Wednesday.
The farmers have additionally staged a protest at Poland’s Lithuanian border, claiming that the Baltic state is being utilized by Ukrainian truckers to bypass their blockade on the border with Ukraine.
Along with lifting tariffs on Ukrainian produce, the EU in 2022 abolished a rule requiring the war-torn nation’s haulage corporations to acquire permits to enter the bloc. Whereas the transfer was designed to inject some much-needed income into Ukraine’s transport business, Polish officers claimed that it allowed Ukrainian truckers to undercut their native counterparts.
The state of affairs was additional exacerbated by Kiev imposing a queuing system that stored Polish vehicles ready for as much as two weeks to return from journeys to Ukraine, whereas Ukrainian vehicles had been free to cross the border as usually as they wished.
Even if Polish officers have repeatedly and publicly warned of the risk posed by low cost imports, Ukrainian Overseas Minister Dmitry Kuleba claimed final week that the protesting farmers had been solely doing so due to the affect of a “Russian disinformation marketing campaign.”
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