Border Guard: Polish farmers completely block Ukrainian trucks at 2 border crossings
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Polish farmers have completely blocked truck traffic at the Yahodin and Hrebenne-Rava-Ruska checkpoints on the Polish-Ukrainian border, Ukraine's State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said on March 24.
He said that 500 trucks are stuck in line at three border checkpoints amid Polish farmers' ongoing blockade to protest against the EU's cheap Ukrainian food imports that they say prompt unfair competition.
“Polish farmers are not allowing Ukrainian freight vehicles to pass from Ukraine to Poland at all," Demchenko said.
The Polish farmers are not allowing a number of vehicles to get to the Ukrainian side either, according to Demchenko. He explained that they had only let through about 60 trucks over the past day through Yahodin, which is a major drop from the checkpoint's daily capacity to process 1,200 to 1,400 trucks.
Kyiv and Warsaw are negotiating a solution to the ongoing border blockade by Polish farmers, as there is no free movement of trucks at any crossing, Ukraine's Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said on air on Feb. 21.
Polish farmers launched a new wave of protests on the border in early February in response to Ukrainian agricultural imports to the EU and in opposition to the Green Deal. The situation escalated on Feb. 20, when protesters restricted the traffic even further and, in one incident, dumped Ukrainian grain on railway tracks.
The two key demands by Polish farmers include higher subsidies and the postponement of the Green Deal, which aims to halve pesticide use, lower fertilizer use, and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski has voiced hope that an agreement between the two countries could be reached in March.
