Polish Truckers Blocking Ukrainian Border

(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

There’s more trouble at the Ukrainian border, but this time it’s not Russia causing it. For the past month, Polish truck drivers have been blocking the roads, setting up a blockade that has delivery vehicles backed up for miles, allegedly preventing relief materials from making it into the country. Some deliveries have been sitting on the roads for weeks. But the truckers aren’t doing this as a form of opposition to the Ukrainian government or its war against Russia. They are protesting a decision by the European Union to change interstate transport rules, allowing Ukrainian truckers to make more deliveries into Western Europe and undercutting the livelihoods of the Polish truckers.

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Pickup trucks and tourniquets bound for Ukraine’s battlefield are stuck in a mileslong line at the border with Poland. Components to build drones to fight off Russian forces are facing weeks of delays.

Ukrainian charities and companies supplying the war-torn country’s military warn that problems are growing as Polish truck drivers show no sign of ending a border blockade that has stretched past a month. The Polish protesters argue that their livelihoods are at stake after the European Union relaxed some transport rules and Ukrainian truckers undercut their business.

While drones will make it to the front line, they’re delayed by two to three weeks, said Oleksandr Zadorozhnyi, operational director of the KOLO foundation, which helps the Ukrainian army with battlefield tech, including drones and communications equipment.

This isn’t exactly a “freedom convoy” but it’s not part of any war effort, either. This is basically a trade dispute and the EU appears to have caused it by disrupting the normal rules of the road and upsetting the balance of commerce. The Polish truckers are attempting to reestablish their previous lines of business.

There does seem to be some dispute between the two sides as to how this is being handled. They are being accused of holding up deliveries of things like parts to build drones and medical supplies. One of the protest organizers claims that’s not true. He said that military supply trucks and those carrying humanitarian aid are passing through “without having to wait at all.”

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It’s difficult to see how that would be possible, however. Some of the lines of vehicles are reportedly as much as 19 miles long. Once you have vehicles stacked up over a distance like that, sorting out the military supplies and humanitarian aid and allowing them to pass straight through would have to be a challenge, to say the least. Meanwhile, Ukrainian military commanders are complaining that the inability to receive parts for drones is already hurting the war effort.

The Polish truckers claim that they’re only seeking to hold up the Ukrainian commercial trucks. They say that their neighbors are offering to transport everything from fish to luxury goods all across the European Union and doing so at cut-rate prices that the Polish truckers can’t match. In a true free market space, the winner would be the company that’s able to provide the service for the best price. But Europe regulates commerce so heavily that these types of conflicts are bound to crop up once in a while.

Either way, some sort of mediator may be required to step in and sort this out. Either that or the EU may need to roll back their regulations to the way they were before the invasion. Poland occupies a key space in the ongoing conflict and you really don’t want to tick them off too badly.

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Ed Morrissey 8:20 PM | November 08, 2024
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