Kyiv hopes for talks with Poland and EU on border blocks this week

Kyiv hopes to hold talks with Poland and the European Commission this week, as thousands of trucks queue at the border due to Polish blocks, in a protest that may affect country’s energy security, a Ukrainian trade representative said on Monday.

Trucks are backed up for miles as Polish truckers blocked roads to three border crossings in a protest, now in its second week, into what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors.Truckers from Ukraine have been exempt from seeking permits to cross the Polish border since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and firms from Russia and Belarus have been setting up Polish entities, Polish truckers have said.They want a return to a limited number of licenses for Ukrainian truckers, a demand Kyiv said it would not consider.”This week we hope to have negotiations in a trilateral format,” Taras Kachka, the representative, said in televised comments on Monday.He said the blockages may affect critical supplies of energy resources for Ukraine, which is suffering from constant Russian attacks.

via Reuters