Poland announced on the evening of Wednesday September 20 that it was no longer supplying weapons to Kiev, a statement which illustrates the increasingly high tensions between the two allies, at a key moment in the Ukrainian response to the Russian invasion. “We are no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on the private Polsat News television channel.
“We are mainly focused on modernizing and rapidly arming the Polish army so that it becomes one of the most powerful land armies in Europe in a very short time,” he said. he explains. He added that the military hub in the southeastern town of Rzeszow, through which Western equipment destined for Ukraine passes, was functioning normally.
The prime minister, however, did not specify when Poland, one of the largest suppliers of arms to Ukraine, had stopped supplying them, or whether this was linked to the conflict over Ukrainian grain, which Warsaw banned imports to protect the interests of its farmers.
A “false thesis”
His announcement comes a few hours after Warsaw’s “emergency” summons of the Ukrainian ambassador to protest against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s comments at the United Nations (UN). On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president criticized the fact that “certain countries feign solidarity [with Ukraine] by indirectly supporting Russia.” The Polish Deputy Foreign Minister, who received the Ukrainian diplomat, denounced this “false” and “particularly unjustified thesis regarding Poland, which has supported Ukraine since the first days of the war.”
The announcement by Brussels on Friday of the end of the ban on the import of Ukrainian cereals, pronounced in May by five states of the European Union, inflamed tempers, provoking unilateral embargoes to which Kiev responded on Monday, by announcing to file a complaint before the World Trade Organization (WTO).
In response, the Polish Prime Minister warned on Wednesday that he would expand the list of Ukrainian products banned from import. “Pressuring Poland in multilateral forums or sending complaints to international courts are not appropriate methods for resolving disputes between our countries,” Polish diplomacy warned in a statement.
“Regrettable tensions”
“We call on our Polish friends to put emotion aside,” reacted the spokesperson for Ukrainian diplomacy, Oleg Nikolenko, after Warsaw announced the summons of the Ukrainian ambassador. Denouncing “the unacceptable nature for Ukraine of Poland’s unilateral ban on imports of Ukrainian grain,” Mr. Nikolenko added that “the Ukrainian side offered Poland a constructive solution to the grain problem.”
He also regretted “the incorrect nature” of the remarks made by Polish President Andrzej Duda during a meeting with the media in New York. Mr. Duda notably compared Ukraine to a drowning man, risking dragging to the bottom and also drowning the one who seeks to save him – Poland.
France deplored, on Wednesday, the tensions between the two countries. “These tensions are regrettable,” said Catherine Colonna, the French foreign minister, in an interview with Agence France-Presse, seeing it as a reflection of “domestic political considerations.” The head of French diplomacy, who spoke after an exceptional Security Council on the occasion of Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the UN, insisted on the fact that Brussels’ decision to end the ban on he importing Ukrainian grain did not result in “a break in competition” or disruption of grain markets.
