Where does the crisis between Poland and Ukraine come from?
Poland announced the non-reopening of the grain corridors, Ukraine threatened a complaint with the WTO and Warsaw finally announced a block on military aid to Kiev. Here's what's happening between Poland and Ukraine and why
That the conflict over wheat could degenerate to the point of pitting two great allies such as Poland and Ukraine against each other could have been foreseen and avoided. The escalation has now occurred and it will be up to the Americans, rather than the EU, to try to put the pieces back together. Faced with Warsaw's announcement not to reopen the solidarity corridors for the passage of Ukrainian wheat through its territory without guarantees that it does not actually transit outside the EU, Kiev threatened to denounce its neighbor ally (but also Slovakia and Hungary) at the WTO, the World Trade Organization. The irritated Polish government first summoned the Ukrainian ambassador, then leaked the possibility of blocking military aid to Kiev. Brussels is helplessly watching the brawl on its eastern borders and it is likely that, in some remote room of the Kremlin, someone is laughing under their breath.
IS COMMON SENSE LACKING?
At this point we wonder if this open-ended controversy could have been avoided with a little common sense on all sides. In Warsaw the electoral campaign has entered the final month, the decisive one, and the tone of the internal debate is becoming increasingly heated. It is inevitable, since the Pis, the conservatives in government, may lose the absolute majority, also because the electoral impact of the scandal on the granting of visas which has exploded again in recent days cannot yet be measured, complete with a request for clarification from the of the German Interior Ministry (led by the SPD) and then of the EU itself.
NERVOUSNESS AND WRONG CALCULATIONS
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is nervous, but also resentful of Kiev because the resentment of Polish farmers is electorally dangerous and the problem of the collapse of the internal grain market had been highlighted for some time. It is difficult to imagine that four weeks after the vote, Warsaw could appear indifferent to the pressures of its agricultural world, which constitutes one of the pillars of the Pis consensus, which is strong in rural areas.
But at the same time Morawiecki did not calculate that forcing his hand, even hinting even hypothetically at a spite over military aid, would have thrown away the credibility regained by the Poles on the international scene which he has given back so much margin to his own government, in any case to the center of conflict with Brussels on the issues of rights and justice. It was no secret that Poland had reached the limit of its possibilities for military aid, but with his statements Morawiecki vaporized the image that Warsaw had built of itself in the Western alliance after the outbreak of the war. It was enough to stop a moment earlier and avoid the last clumsy step that restarts everything from the beginning and casts new shadows on the ability of a party like the Pis to hold together.
But Volodymyr Zelensky is also nervous, who after months of tension must now face his allies' war-weariness. Of course, the conflict is fought by Ukrainian soldiers and suffered by Ukrainian civilians, but the public opinions of the allied countries, fundamental for military and economic support for Kiev, are not psychologically equipped to withstand the lengthening times, while the propaganda of The Kremlin insinuates itself through known and lesser-known channels to weaken its tenacity. Yet, going so far as to denounce to the WTO what has so far been the most solid ally, or accusing it of false solidarity and of "preparing the ground for Russia" without ever mentioning it in the UN speech was not a great move.
THE MISTAKES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
The EU itself, whose priority should still be to ensure that Russia does not win the conflict with Ukraine, could have shown greater empathy towards its Central European members (and towards Poland first and foremost, but also towards Slovakia, another country to be handled with caution given that the vote is on 30 September) and continue to mediate on the solidarity corridors, looking for the tools to guarantee what is established in the agreement – that is, the complete transit of Ukrainian cereals outside the EU borders – instead of forcing their hand and ending wheat restrictions immediately. The deterioration of relations between Warsaw and Kiev would not have occurred if the European Commission had not concluded that “market distortions in the 5 member states bordering Ukraine have disappeared”. Who benefited?
To put it in the words of Postimees, an Estonian newspaper and the voice of a Baltic country that shares the concerns and hopes of the countries that left the Soviet galaxy, "even if some of Morawiecki's statements were misquoted or presumably said in a not entirely intentional manner, a public dispute with one of the most active supporters of Ukraine to date is very unpleasant. Nor was the UN General Assembly the best place for Ukraine to berate an ally. But under no circumstances should the Polish Prime Minister have made such a surprising statement."
DETENS BETWEEN POLAND AND UKRAINE
Eventually the firefighters got to work. On the one hand, Polish President Andrej Duda reiterated that Poland will continue to supply weapons to Ukraine in accordance with signed contracts, and perhaps even transfer more from its own stockpiles when receiving South Korean and US-made equipment. On the other hand, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi said he had entered into negotiations with his Polish counterpart Robert Telus in search of a solution to the stalemate. Relaxing declarations that arrive after other "rebel" countries in the central-eastern European area had reached agreements: first Romania and Bulgaria, finally Slovakia which agreed to establish a licensing system for imports of Ukrainian wheat, allowing the lifting of the ban. And even with Budapest the road now seems downhill.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/crisi-polonia-ucraina/ on Sun, 24 Sep 2023 04:59:23 +0000.