Polish truck drivers blocking Ukraine border
KORCZOWA, Poland — Pickups and tourniquets bound for Ukraine’s battlefield are among items 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 means that the Russian army will have the ability to kill Ukrainian soldiers and terrorize civilians for several weeks longer,” he said.
Truck drivers in Poland have blocked access roads to border crossings since Nov. 6, creating lines that stretch for more than 19 miles and last up to three weeks in freezing temperatures. The protesters insist that they’re not stopping military transports or humanitarian aid into Ukraine.
“This is very puzzling to me, even hard to believe because everybody knows — those who order, those who expedite and those who do the transport — that aid for the military passes through without having to wait at all,” said Waldemar Jaszczur, a protest organizer.
The Polish truckers, meanwhile, say their Ukrainian counterparts are offering lower prices to haul everything from fish to luxury goods across the European Union since getting a temporary waiver on the 27-nation bloc’s transport rules after Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Despite Poland and other nearby countries being some of Ukraine’s biggest supporters in the war, resentment has built from truckers and farmers who are losing business to lower-cost Ukrainian goods and services flowing into the world’s biggest trading bloc. It underscores the challenges of integrating Ukraine into the EU if approved.
Now, the commercial clash is spilling over to the battlefield, the Ukrainian charities say.
About 200 trucks needed to transport ammunition and evacuate the wounded from the front line are blocked at the border because “deliveries have practically stopped,” said Ivan Poberzhniak, head of procurement and logistics for Come Back Alive, Ukraine’s largest charitable organization providing the military with equipment.
The trucks are easy targets for Russia, so it’s impossible to deliver enough of them even normally, he said.
Jaszczur, the protest organizer, said Ukrainian truckers have been doing unauthorized transport services across Europe. They are asking “glaringly low prices” — 35% lower than what Polish truckers charge — and are “driving us out of the market,” he said.
The same thing is happening in other countries like Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, he said. Some Slovak truckers staged a protest of their own in recent days at the Ukrainian border.
Jaszczur says many Polish transport companies are going under because of the pressure from Ukrainian competition.