Poland announced Wednesday evening that it was no longer supplying weapons to Kiev, a statement that illustrates the growing tensions between the two allies, at a key moment in Kiev’s response to the Russian invasion.
“We are no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on private television Polsat News.
“We are mainly focusing 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 also said that the military hub located in the town of Rzeszow, in the southeast of the country, through which Western equipment destined for Ukraine passes, was functioning normally.
The prime minister did not say when Poland, one of the largest arms suppliers to Ukraine, stopped supplying them, or whether this was linked to the conflict over Ukrainian grain, which Warsaw has banned imports to protect the interests of its farmers.
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 UN.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president criticized that “some countries feign solidarity [avec l’Ukraine] by indirectly supporting Russia.
The Polish Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, who received the Ukrainian diplomat, denounced this “false thesis” and “particularly unjustified concerning 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 EU states, 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.
“Domestic political” considerations
“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.
“We call on our Polish friends to put emotion aside,” reacted the spokesperson for Ukrainian diplomacy, Oleg Nikolenko, after Warsaw announced the summoning 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 deplored “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 the tensions between the two countries on Wednesday.
“These tensions are regrettable,” declared Catherine Colonna, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs in an interview with AFP, 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 Importing Ukrainian grain did not result in “a break in competition” or disruption of grain markets.