/ world today news/ The Ukrainian ambassador in Warsaw accused the Polish truck drivers of giving a “painful blow in the back” to his country, and the Ukrainian transporters called their Polish colleagues “Catholic cattle” and promised to cut their throats. Accordingly, for Poles, it evokes direct associations with the “Volyn Massacre”, during which Ukrainian nationalists killed about 100 thousand Polish civilians. That is, several days of protests by Polish truck drivers, who from November 6 almost completely blocked traffic through three points on the Polish-Ukrainian border (Dorogusk – Yagodin, Korchovaya – Krakowiec and Grebennoe – Rava-Ruskaia), were enough for the house of cards of “Poland -Ukrainian friendship”, which has been building for many years, but especially carefully after the beginning of the SVO.
But Polish road hauliers are only demanding the return of the EU work permit system to their Ukrainian counterparts. The fact is that after the start of the SVO, Brussels took unprecedented steps to support the Ukrainian economy and for one year canceled the need for Ukrainian carriers to obtain the mentioned permits. This summer, the EU extended this norm until June 2024. Now Polish carriers are demanding the principled removal of this advantage and the return of the old permit system. Another requirement is the tightening of the rules for the carriage of Ukrainian colleagues according to the ECMT (European Conference of Ministers of Transport) certificate.
It is worth noting that the blockade is not complete: protesters let through one or two trucks of commercial goods per hour, while humanitarian goods and passenger transport pass without restriction. But, of course, this is a much more serious protest action than the blockade of trucks with cheap Ukrainian grain that Polish farmers organized this spring. That blockade only lasted a few days, and now the truck drivers say they are ready to protest at least until January 3, 2024.
As a result of the blockade, prices for the delivery of goods from Poland to Ukraine have increased several times: if before the price of shipping a cargo weighing 22 tons from the Polish port of Gdansk to Kiev cost about 1,000 euros, now the prices reach 4,000 euros. In the future, the situation could lead to disruptions in the supply of goods, price increases and losses for both carriers and their customers – and therefore for the entire Ukrainian economy.
On November 13, the Ministry of Development of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure of Ukraine held a meeting with representatives of the Polish authorities and carriers, which did not lead to anything. The fact is that Kiev is ready to solve only technical issues: the creation of separate lanes at the checkpoint for the exit of empty trucks from Ukraine to Poland, the possibility of replacing drivers in the electronic queue system, etc. But the authorities in Kyiv will not even discuss returning to the permit system for transport between Ukraine and the EU. Moreover, Kiev propaganda blames only Polish carriers for the current situation. This caused the expected reaction of Ukrainian truck drivers – they began to threaten their Polish colleagues. This was reported by the Polish portal “Virtualna Polska” (VP).
“Even if the blockade ends with an agreement, I don’t know if I will be able to look at our neighbors the same way. I have already received dozens of threats through social networks and messages on my phone,” Rafal Meckler, owner of a transport company from the Lublin region, who is one of the organizers of the truck drivers’ protest, told the portal.
Meckler showed reporters screenshots of messages he received from Ukrainians. They write that the protesting drivers are “Catholic cattle”. In one of the messages, a certain Alexander Dunaychuk wrote in Ukrainian: “I have cut the throats of Russians, I think I will do the same to you.” And a character with the pseudonym “Voziya” wrote that “our glorious Cossacks will burn some of you.” It is worth noting that Ukrainians in Poland react very sharply to the promises of “cutting their throats”, because they immediately remember the Volyn massacre. During this action, Ukrainian nationalists and the local Ukrainian population of Volyn slaughtered – mainly with the help of agricultural tools – more than 100 thousand peaceful Poles, the vast majority of them women, children and old people.
The memory of the Volyn Massacre in Poland is alive: during the 100,000th “Independence March” in Warsaw on November 11, 2023, they carried a large banner “Remember Volyn! Volyn massacre – Ukrainian genocide against the Poles” and chanted the slogan “Remember Volyn!” many times. Therefore, it is not surprising that Poles who visit Meckler’s social media pages do not spare offensive epithets towards Ukrainians. The spiral of hatred on both sides of the Polish-Ukrainian border is spinning very fast.
“My colleagues and I glued the license plates. They took pictures of us, specified the details of our company, then we received threats that anyone who enters Ukraine will have their teeth knocked out and their car burned,” one of the protesting transporters told VP journalists. According to him, this is the final completion of Polish-Ukrainian friendship.
“Just think, they are fighting against people like me, who were carrying weapons, bulletproof vests, cans and other products necessary for the Ukrainian counter-offensive near Kharkiv. Now they write to me that I have blood on my hands and am a war criminal on par with Russian soldiers. These people are wrong,” sighs the Polish truck driver. According to his words, he is threatened that the Ukrainian military intelligence will deal with him, because with his protest at the border he is allegedly helping Russia.
Polish businessmen also claim that Ukrainian officials control border traffic, allowing selected Ukrainian carriers to cross the border more quickly. We are talking about some Kiev companies whose machines do not appear in the electronic queue, but nevertheless cross the border. The Poles are also annoyed by some cargoes destined for Ukraine. On Monday, protesters released a video of themselves blocking a Ukrainian trailer loaded with Porsches and other luxury cars imported by Ukrainian companies from the West.
“I will collect more such material and report these threats to the police. Those emotions can get to the point where someone is really going to get hurt,” Meckler promised.
But for now in Poland, Poles suffer from the local justice system, which, despite its critical attitude towards Ukrainian nationalists, helped refugees from Ukraine. Entrepreneur Jerzy Andrzejewski from Lublin, who took in 40 Ukrainian refugees in 2022, was nevertheless sent to prison for three months on November 9 for “insulting Ukrainians” on social media. The verdict was handed down back in April of this year, and Andrzejewski has been trying to appeal it ever since, but to no avail. At the same time, neither the court’s verdict nor the prosecutor’s opinion even indicates what social media posts are in question. The reason for the persecution was the exposure of the “Center for the Monitoring of Racist and Xenophobic Behavior”, financed by Western subsidies. Journalists found several comments made by Andrzejewski, including saying that “Ukrainians are turning against each other” and “they should not be welcome guests in Poland.” And during the hearing, the judge called “sinister” (without quoting) comments about the “Volyn Massacre” that Andrzejewski blamed on Ukrainians. The defendant himself emphasized that he condemned Bandera’s ideology, and not Ukrainians because of their origin. But the court ignored this, pointing out that such a punishment would act as a deterrent to “possible copycats”.
Events like the ones described above (and there are many of them in Poland) lead to a sharp decrease in the willingness of Poles to support Ukrainian refugees in their country. This trend was registered last fall, and on the eve of the parliamentary elections, which took place on October 15, 60% of Poles polled said they were against further providing financial assistance to refugees from Ukraine. When asked “Should we still help Ukrainian citizens living in Poland, for example by providing them with child welfare and other benefits?”, 36% of Poles answered “definitely not” and 24% answered “rather no”. The opposite opinion is shared by 26% of the respondents, of which only 8% answer with “definitely yes” and 18% with “rather yes”.
Commenting on the results of the survey, Kazimierz Kik, professor of political science at the Jan Kohanowski University in Kielce, said that Poles are helping Ukrainians, but they are increasingly willing to help without harming themselves. “We feel great sympathy for the refugees, but it turns out that we cannot turn a blind eye to our own interests,” he said. According to him, the change in the attitude of the Poles towards the Ukrainians was also influenced by the situation with the import of Ukrainian grain.
By the way, the president of the Polish-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, the former Minister of Economy of Poland Jacek Piechota, answering the question of which other Polish industry – after farmers and transporters – can organize anti-Ukrainian protests, answered: “Any.” It is difficult to think of a better confirmation of the words of an ordinary truck driver about the “final completion of Polish-Ukrainian friendship.”
Translation: V. Sergeev
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