Polish farmers have again dumped Ukrainian grain, tensions are rising

This angered Kyiv and re-increased tensions between the neighbors.

Polish farmers are blocking Ukrainian trucks from entering their country to protest what they say is unfair competition from cheap imports from their eastern neighbor, damaging friendly relations between Warsaw and Kyiv.

Farmers launched a new wave of protests on Tuesday, blocking about 100 roads leading to the border with Ukraine and illegally opening two Ukrainian freight rail cars at the Medyka border crossing.

“A group of farmers got on the tracks running along the blocked road (…) A small amount of grain was found on the tracks,” a local police spokeswoman told AFP news agency.

Poland loyally supports Ukraine, which seeks to repel the Russian invasion, but Ukrainian officials reacted angrily to the protests of disgruntled Polish farmers.

Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture Mykola Solsky, reacting to the incident in Medyka, stated that Kyiv strongly condemns such forms of protest, adding that the freight wagon was transporting grain to Germany.

“Hindering Ukraine’s trade with other countries of the world is unacceptable and contradicts the common goals of Ukraine and Poland,” M. Solsky said in a statement.

The Russian invasion in 2022 severely disrupted Ukraine’s agricultural sector, with many of its Black Sea export centers blocked and large tracts of farmland rendered unusable by hostilities.

Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, called the latest incident “a political provocation aimed at dividing our nations.”

“For two years now, Ukrainian farmers have been harvesting grain with bulletproof vests, under the threat of rocket attacks and mines,” O. Kubrakov wrote on the X social network, adding that the world’s food supply depends on Ukrainian grain.

Ukraine’s state railway company also condemned the incident on Tuesday, saying it was “outraged by such actions by Polish protesters and calls for an end to illegal actions”.

“Agriculture is dying little by little”

Across Europe, outraged farmers are protesting rising costs, high fuel prices, red tape and the environmental demands of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the upcoming Green Deal.

Dozens of tractors came to the town of Ryki in eastern Poland and blocked one of the main highways leading to the border with Ukraine.

Farmers hung red and white Polish flags on their tractors and placards reading: “Stop the uncontrolled influx of Ukrainian goods” and “Agriculture is slowly dying.”

Traffic to EU member Poland has been a lifeline for Ukrainian companies, particularly its agricultural sector, after Russia’s invasion disrupted key trade routes across the Black Sea.

But increased imports by road have angered Polish logistics companies and farmers, who say they are being forced to cut prices because of Ukrainian competitors.

“I’m here to get rid of restrictions imposed by the European Union on fallow, the Green Deal and, most importantly, to stop the import of Ukrainian food,” Tomasz Golak, who owns a livestock and grain farm in a nearby village, told AFP.

“This year, wheat is being sold at half the price of last year,” he added.

Last year, the EU eased restrictions on farmers to set some of their land fallow, and this month extended the exemption under pressure from protests.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the blockade showed an “erosion of solidarity” and could not be considered normal or ordinary.