- By Antoinette Radford
- BBC News
September 21, 2023
Updated 48 minutes ago
Image source: Tomasz Gzell/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
One of Ukraine’s strongest allies, Poland, has announced it will stop supplying the country with arms as a diplomatic dispute over grain escalates.
The country’s prime minister said they would instead focus on arming themselves with more modern weapons.
The move comes as tensions rise between the two nations.
On Tuesday, Poland summoned the Ukrainian ambassador over President Volodymyr Zelensky’s comments to the United Nations.
He said some nations had feigned solidarity with Ukraine, which Warsaw denounced as “unjustified towards Poland, which has supported Ukraine since the first days of the war.”
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced the decision to stop supplying Ukraine with arms in a televised address on Wednesday, after a day of rapidly escalating tensions between the two countries over grain imports.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine because we are now equipping Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said.
The grain dispute began after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly closed major Black Sea shipping routes and forced Ukraine to find alternative land routes.
This in turn led to large quantities of grain reaching Central Europe.
As a result, the European Union temporarily banned grain imports to five countries; Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia to protect local farmers who feared that Ukrainian grain would drive down local prices.
The ban ended on September 15 and the EU decided not to extend it, but Hungary, Slovakia and Poland decided to continue implementing it.
The European Commission has repeatedly stated that it is not up to individual EU members to determine trade policy for the bloc.
Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrdenko said: “It is crucial for us to prove that individual member states cannot ban the import of Ukrainian goods.”
But Poland said it would maintain the ban and a “complaint to the WTO does not impress us.”
Mr Morawiecki said they would increase the number of products banned from Kiev if Ukraine escalated the grain dispute. The Polish Foreign Ministry added that “putting pressure on Poland in multilateral forums or sending complaints to international courts are not appropriate methods to resolve differences between our countries.”
Despite the ban, the three countries said they would continue to allow grain to be transported through them to other markets.
Kiev urged Poland to “put emotions aside” after summoning its ambassador, suggesting instead that the parties should take a constructive approach to resolving the dispute.
French Foreign Minister Catherina Colonna said on Wednesday an EU study found Ukrainian grain imports would not cripple European farmers, calling the tensions “regrettable.”