Polish authorities have stopped the shipment of weapons to Ukraine, instead focusing on arming itself instead, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Wednesday, arising from a dispute over the exports of Kyiv’s agricultural produce.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said in an appearance on Polish television channel Polsat, according to European Pravda. “If you don’t want to be on the defensive, you have to have something to defend yourself with,” he added, insisting, though, that the move wouldn’t endanger Ukraine’s security.
Morawiecki’s comments came as tensions escalated between Kyiv and the EU over the past week, after the European Commission moved to allow Ukrainian grain sales across the bloc, to end restrictions on grain imports which five eastern EU countries originally sought to protect their farmers from competition.
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia responded to the Commission’s move by imposing unilateral bans on Ukrainian grain imports, in apparent violation of the EU’s internal market rules.
Kyiv struck back by filing lawsuits against the three countries at the World Trade Organization.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday told the U.N. General Assembly in New York: “It is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater — making a thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”
While Zelenskyy didn’t specifically mention Poland, Warsaw summoned Kyiv’s ambassador to the foreign ministry in response.
Morawiecki also delivered a “warning” to “Ukraine’s authorities,” earlier telling Polsat, “if they are to escalate the conflict like that, we will add additional products to the ban on imports into Poland. Ukrainian authorities do not understand the degree to which Poland’s farming industry has been destabilized.”
