Poland’s Prime Minister announced yesterday that his country was ending arms shipments to Ukraine. Instead of sending military support to Kyiv, Poland will be upgrading its own military capabilities with more modern weaponry. But this wasn’t a signal that Poland was suddenly supporting Russia or Putin’s invasion. It’s part of a simmering spat between the EU and several of its eastern block members. And rather than dealing with military matters, the dispute is based on agriculture. This move may represent the first crack in the armor of the unified opposition to Russia, but it also highlights growing tensions between various factions inside of the EU itself. (Politico)
Warsaw has stopped supplying weapons to Kyiv and is focusing on arming itself instead, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Wednesday, amid a dispute over Ukraine’s agricultural exports.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said in an appearance on Polish television channel Polsat, according to European Pravda. “If you don’t want to be on the defensive, you have to have something to defend yourself with,” he added, insisting, though, that the move wouldn’t endanger Ukraine’s security.
Morawiecki’s terse comments came as tensions escalated between Kyiv and the EU over the past week, after the European Commission moved to allow Ukrainian grain sales across the bloc, ending restrictions on grain imports which five eastern EU countries originally sought to protect their farmers from competition.
This isn’t some new complaint from Poland that just came out of left field. When the original EU deal to support Ukraine was enacted, five eastern nations led by Poland carved out an agreement under which Ukrainian grain exports would be banned in those nations. This was done to protect the market interests of their own farmers. The original ban came with an expiration date, but on September 12, Poland’s Prime Minister sent a letter to Brussels saying that if the ban was lifted, Poland would institute its own individual ban in response. They have now announced such a ban and they were quickly followed by Hungary and Slovakia. Bulgaria and Romania are expected to follow suit.
In response, Ukraine has already filed lawsuits against three of those nations with the World Trade Organization. Poland is still attempting to maintain a cooperative attitude in public, saying, “Our friends in Poland need to understand” that Poland’s agricultural markets can’t be destabilized. But this situation is clearly creating tension among the allies.
The immediate effect on Ukraine is likely to be minimal because Poland hasn’t been sending all that much military aid to them anyway. But it still represents the first defection from the “As Long As It Takes” coalition. And it’s happening at the same time that Zelensky is on his way to Washington to argue for continued or even increased support from the United States. Congress is already struggling with additional aid to Ukraine in the face of sinking public support. It’s not hard to imagine even more Americans asking why we need to keep sending billions of dollars over there when at least one of Ukraine’s own European neighbors isn’t sharing the burden.
On the other side of the pond, we appear to be seeing yet another symptom of cracks appearing in the European Union. The Eastern Bloc nations that were formerly entangled with the Soviet Union have always adopted more conservative policies than the more liberal Western members. This has left them at odds on a variety of issues, such as how to handle the massive influx of refugees from Africa in recent years. All of this is being viewed with delight in Moscow, of course. Putin must be wondering at this point whether or not his gambit might actually be working and if he can outlast the solidarity of the West against him. And if support for the ongoing war entirely collapses in the United States, Russia will effectively have won.
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