Polish PM Tusk rejects Zelensky's call for urgent meeting

(Patria) - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has rejected an appeal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for an urgent meeting.

Zelensky asked Tusk to meet, possibly together with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen as early as tomorrow, at the border, to resolve the escalation of border blockades with Ukraine due to protests by Polish farmers and transporters.

"I said clearly. We do not need symbolism in our relations. The Polish and Ukrainian governments will meet on March 28 in Warsaw," the Polish prime minister rejected Zelensky's appeal.

Tusk reminded that Poland has long made it clear that its government's obligation is to protect its market, including agricultural products.

"We warned about the threats related to the liberalisation of trade with Ukraine. Aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia is beyond discussion. We will seek solutions, both domestically and in negotiations with Ukraine and European institutions, so that the negative consequences of trade liberalisation with Ukraine are felt as little as possible. Farmers can count on me," Tusk said at a press conference in Warsaw, as reported by b92.

After increasingly frequent incidents at protests by Polish farmers, where demonstrators throw grain from Ukrainian trucks and wagons onto roads or railway tracks, even though they are in transit to other markets, Zelensky accused Poles of a lack of solidarity with a country at war, and representatives of the two governments even exchanged threats to impose a complete embargo on imports of goods from the other country.

Subsequently, this week Zelensky appealed to Polish Prime Minister Tusk to urgently meet at the border and to Polish President Andrzej Duda to support that dialogue in order to end the blockades of the Ukrainian border with Poland.

Prime Minister Tusk today promised Zelensky that the Polish government will place border crossings and part of the road network on the list of critical infrastructure so that blockades do not affect military and humanitarian aid from Poland and other Western members to Ukraine.

"There is one thing I will never agree to. We cannot allow those who shamelessly publicly support Putin, serve Russian propaganda, and compromise the Polish state, us Poles, and the demonstrators to be active using the farmers' protests at the Polish-Ukrainian border," Tusk said.

Regarding a banner on one of the Polish tractors calling on Putin to restore order in Ukraine, Brussels, and the Polish government, Prime Minister Tusk warned that these weeks will decide the fate of Ukraine, which also means the fate of Poland.

"Any public attack, support for Putin's narrative, is treason against the homeland. We will not tolerate this in any way," the Polish prime minister said.

Polish farmers have been organising mass protests for weeks, taking to the streets with tractors to block traffic in major cities, and also periodically blocking the border.

The reason is that they blame the previous Polish authorities, now the opposition Law and Justice party, European Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, and the European Commission for abolishing customs duties and quotas on imports of goods from Ukraine in 2022 as aid to the country in its war with Russia, while cheap grain and agricultural products have destabilised the markets of Ukraine's neighbours.