Now that über-Globalist and Euro-fanatic Donald Tusk has come into power in Poland with a mandate to reinstate all the failed policies from Brussels, you’d think that the agricultural tensions with Ukraine would have quickly subsided, right? Wrong.
Much to the contrary, amid the general European Farmers’ Revolt, Polish farmers have, in fact, greatly stepped up the protests, leading Kiev to a breaking point, calling on the European Commission to take robust action after demonstrators blockaded the border, opened railway carriages and destroyed Ukrainian grain.
While Warsaw supported Kiev’s fight against Russia, protests from farmers against unfair competition have re-strained ties after Polish truckers also blocked border crossings around the turn of the year.
Reuters reported:
“Tuesday’s protests from farmers marked an escalation from previous demonstrations, with a near-total blockade of all Ukrainian border crossings and disruption at ports and on roads nationwide.
Television footage showed protesters at the Medyka border crossing opening railway carriages to allow grain to pour onto the tracks.
‘The scattering of Ukrainian grain on the railroad tracks is another political provocation aimed at dividing our nations’, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a post on X.”
All across Europe, farmers are demonstrating mostly against the crippling European Union measures to tackle ‘climate change’ but also what they say is unfair competition from foreign grain.
Ukraine, in particular, is targeted after a 2022 EU decision to waive duties on Ukrainian food imports.
“Protesters’ tractors carried banners that read: ‘With grain flowing from Ukraine, Polish farmers will go bankrupt’.
An organizer of the protest at Doruhusk crossing, Marcin Wielgosz, said buses would be allowed to cross once an hour on Tuesday, but no truck would pass from 0800 to 1800 local time.
‘In my opinion, the border should be closed. Procedures and systems should be clarified and then maybe it could reopen but not with the rules that we have now. Because right now you can bring whatever you want, however much you want… into Poland’, he told Reuters.”
Ukrainian truckers, on their part, are staging their own round-the-clock counter-demonstration at three crossings.
Tusks’ government has expressed sympathy for the farmers’ demands but has also urged them – as you would expect – not to take action that could damage Kiev’s war effort.
BBC reported:
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the protests demonstrated the ‘daily erosion of solidarity’ with Ukraine.
He said the protests were about politics, not grain, because ‘only 5% of our agricultural exports pass through the Polish border’.”
Huge queues of lorries mean that clearing customs at one crossing is now taking more than two weeks.
Organizers demand an import ban on Ukrainian agriculture products and the scrapping of restrictions on the use of fertilizers and pesticides under the EU Green Deal.
Read more:
The post Despite Polish PM Tusk’s Pro-Ukraine Efforts, Farmers Block Border Crossings, Infuriate Kiev by Opening Carriages and Destroying Grain appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.