MOSCOW, April 2 Polish farmers resumed blocking truck traffic through The Ugrinov-Dolgobychev checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Polish border, the State Border Service of Ukraine reported.
The day before, a representative of the Ukrainian border service Andrey Demchenko warned that Polish farmers could resume the transport blockade at the Ugrinov-Dolgobychev checkpoint on Tuesday.
“The movement of trucks in front of the Ugrinov-Dolgobychev checkpoint is difficult. According to information from Polish border guards, today at about 9.00 (coincides with Moscow time) on the territory of Poland in front of the Ugrinov-Dolgobychev checkpoint, traffic blocking for trucks has resumed,” says a message published on the Telegram channel of the State Border Service of Ukraine.
The nationwide protest of farmers began on February 9. Farmers in Poland are protesting throughout the country, blocking roads and entrances to checkpoints on the border with Ukraine. At border crossings, unknown persons have already spilled grain from Ukrainian trucks and railway cars several times. The main demands of the protesters are to stop the import of agricultural products from Ukraine to Poland and abandon the environmental plans of the European Union (the so-called Green Deal), which involves achieving zero emissions into the atmosphere by 2050.
Polish-Ukrainian relations have become significantly more complicated due to the embargo on Ukrainian grain. On September 15, 2023, the European Commission decided not to extend restrictions on the import of four types of Ukrainian agricultural products into several EU border countries, but obliged Kyiv to introduce export control measures. After this, the authorities of Slovakia, Hungary and Poland announced that they were extending the ban unilaterally. In this regard, Ukraine filed a complaint with the WTO. In response, three EU countries announced that they would boycott meetings of the coordination platform on Ukrainian grain.