Poland Says Closer to Resolving Grain Conflict with Ukraine

Poland and Ukraine were closer to resolving a conflict over farm imports, Warsaw said Wednesday, on the eve of bilateral talks on the issue that has angered farmers in the EU member.

Polish farmers have been blocking border crossings with Ukraine since last month to protest at what they say is unfair competition from goods from the war-torn country.

The border blockades and grain dispute have strained ties between the neighbors, even as Poland has shown staunch support for Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

“We can say there's been a certain rapprochement between the respective positions but of course... each is fighting for himself,” Poland's Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski told AFP.

“Everything's still ahead of us. The negotiations will certainly not end today,” he said, before his meeting Wednesday with Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Solsky.

Governing coalition lawmaker Krzysztof Paszyk told the Polish news agency PAP that the two countries were “on the verge of resolving these issues.”

He said the bilateral government talks scheduled for Thursday in Warsaw would notably focus on agriculture, commerce, the economy and military support for Ukraine.

Ukraine has seen its agriculture sector crippled by Russia's invasion in 2022. Many of its major export routes through the Black Sea have been blocked and its farmland rendered unusable by warfare.

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However, Warsaw might be divided in its stance on the idea with the foreign minister calling it a “constitutional duty” while its deputy prime minister worrying it could drag Poland into the war.

In a bid to help Kyiv economically, the European Union in 2022 scrapped tariffs on Ukrainian goods transiting the 27-nation bloc by road.

But a lot of the Ukrainian cereal exports destined for non-EU countries have accumulated in Poland and elsewhere, undercutting local producers.