/ world today news/ Poland’s relations with Russia are threatened by an even more serious cooling. The patience of the Russian MPs has run out: they want to give a mirror answer to Warsaw. We are talking about banning Polish trucks from crossing Russian territory. Russian trucks have long since lost the ability to travel to the EU. What damage will this bring to both sides?
A draft of an address to the government was submitted to the State Duma calling for a ban on Polish motor carriers traveling through Russia. It is proposed to allow them to travel only from the border to the nearest customs terminals to attach trailers or reload goods with Russian carriers. In addition, it is proposed to exclude the filling of Polish trucks with fuel at Russian retail prices and to set the price of fuel for them at the level of prices in EU countries, the document follows.
“As a result of the decision, Poles will lose about 8.5 billion euros in income received at the expense of Russia,” commented the Speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin.
According to him, the leadership of Poland “must bear responsibility for the demolition of the monuments to our soldiers and officers, for the Russophobic policy.” And according to the chairman, it is necessary to start by explaining the actions of more than 20 thousand drivers who will lose their jobs, and about two thousand Polish transport companies will go bankrupt.
The last straw was the story of the seizure by the Polish authorities on April 29 of a school building belonging to the Russian Embassy in Warsaw.
“From this project, Russia begins testing retaliatory sanctions, primarily against Polish business. Banning Polish carriers from carrying out transport in Russia is the least that can be done,” says Alexander Timofeev, Associate Professor of the Department of Informatics at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics.
In fact, the ban on Polish truck drivers will be a mirror response to Russia, as the EU, in the fifth package of sanctions, banned Russian (and Belarusian) transport companies from transporting goods through European territory. And now justice will prevail.
Another thing is that if such transport is not prohibited with other EU countries, then Polish companies can find a loophole by re-registering their companies in Germany or another European country. And then not Polish, but, so to speak, German or other trucks will drive to Russia. “Polish carriers can move the location of their offices to third countries, and this is to some extent a way to circumvent such Russian sanctions,” says Timofeev. Therefore, a complete ban on the transit of European trucks through the territory of Russia may be required.
Losses to Polish businesses could reach billions of dollars, and 20,000 people could lose their jobs. And we have to understand that the drop in income will affect a much larger number of people because every driver has a family. In addition, thousands of people work in the service sector for transportation companies, from auto repair to food preparation. The bankruptcy of transport companies will hit them directly.
“Out of 45,000 international carriers, less than a thousand are Polish. This problem will be global only for the Polish carriers themselves. They pass goods through Russia from the EU to third countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia,” says Timofeev.
“Fueling at ‘EU prices’ will also hit Polish transport workers.” On average in the EU, a liter of A-95 now costs 1.5 euros, that is, 130 rubles. While in our retail network they ask about 50-55 rubles for it. That’s almost triple the price difference. Diesel does not differ so drastically, but it is also noticeable,” says Artyom Deev, head of the analytical department at AMarkets.
Russian business, on the contrary, can absorb part of the income of the Poles, who will have to reload their goods on trucks of Russian carriers.
“Globally, Russia will not suffer much, as among European countries Poland is only in 11th place in terms of the share of exports to Russia,” Deev points out. Meanwhile, through Poland, Russia can also receive parallel imports. Main imports from Poland are machinery, equipment and apparatus. As well as products of the chemical industry, textiles, paper, cars and food. However, the share of Poles in road transport and parallel imports is small. First, 45,000 international car carriers travel in Russia, and among them there are only 1,000 or 2,000 Polish companies. Second, Russia has much more compliant and large parallel import partners.
“To a greater extent, parallel imports go through China, Turkey and Kazakhstan, and the confrontation with sanctions on food products has been going on for eight years. So the ban will hit Poland to a greater extent, and the Russian economy will receive much less damage,” Deev believes.
However, Russia has one vulnerable point – the Kaliningrad exclave. “I personally have a question about Kaliningrad Oblast, which imports a lot of food and goods for daily use from Poland. If the Poles can’t be ‘bent over’ – and I see a political game in all this – and relations deteriorate completely, some alternative supply channels for the region will have to be envisaged,” says Deev.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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