The Polish Foreign Ministry announced an economic decline in relations between Warsaw and Kiev

There is currently a period of economic recession between Poland and Ukraine, and enormous efforts will be required to normalize relations. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau announced this on Monday, October 2, on the Polsat News TV channel.

“In politics, including bilateral politics between different countries, we have periods of economic ups and downs. Now, when it comes to relations between Poland and Ukraine, we are entering a period of economic recession,” he said.

The head of the Polish department explained that one of the reasons for this is different national interests, in particular “misunderstandings regarding the transit of Ukrainian grain through Poland.” According to him, the fact that Rau was absent from the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Kyiv on October 2 is partly an expression of the deterioration of relations between the two countries.

Last year, the European Union (EU) allowed Kyiv to supply food to the union countries duty-free, which hit farmers in Poland and some other countries. Since May 2023, the European Commission (EC) introduced restrictions on the import of four types of Ukrainian agricultural products into several border countries of the union, but on September 15, the EC decided not to extend the ban.

Despite this, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary extended the embargo. Polish Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Robert Telus said that Ukrainian grain is a threat to EU member countries, capable of destabilizing their domestic markets.

On September 19, Polish Minister of European Affairs Szymon Szynkowski vel Senk said that Poland may stop supporting the Ukrainian side due to the situation with grain supplies.

Kremlin official Dmitry Peskov, at a briefing on September 20, commenting on the dispute between Kiev and Warsaw, noted that this is not the first and not the last conflict, and also added that the Ukrainian regime will continue to demonstrate its behavior, which will be less and less to the Europeans’ liking.

At the same time, Denis Denisov, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, in a conversation with Izvestia, expressed the opinion that the situation with the ban on the import of Ukrainian grain to Poland would have an extremely negative impact on relations between the two countries. However, he noted that this does not mean that Warsaw will stop supporting Kyiv militarily and financially – its Western partners will not allow it to do this.