Poland’s state railway operator claims that its Ukrainian counterpart has been blocking rail shipments to the country for weeks in an “unprecedented” move. It notes that Poland is the only country targeted, and argues that the decision breaches international trade agreements.
The news comes shortly after Ukraine itself accused Poland, which is its second largest trade partner, of violating a free trade agreement by rejecting Kyiv’s request to expand freight permits.
Andrzej Olszewski from the board of Polish State Railways (PKP), a state company, said yesterday that supply chains through Ukraine have been gummed up since 30 November 2021 as a result of the ban. He said PKP was “struggling” with its operations on the Polish-Ukrainian border and was unsure how long the situation would last.
The decision by Ukrainian Railways (UZ) reportedly blocks all shipments sent from 15 countries, including China, Russia and Kazakhstan, to Poland with transit through Ukraine.
Kyiv has – according a report by Polish state broadcast TVP today based on Ukrainian sources – claimed that the situation has resulted from renovation work on the railways. It also says that Poland has not been taking back empty wagons as required, leading to them “accumulating on the Ukrainian side”.
However, Olszewski noted that Poland is “the only European country affected by such an indefinite ban”, while TVP reports that rail transit is still running from Ukraine to Slovakia and Hungary, with which it also shares borders.
Unnamed Ukrainian officials who spoke to Ukrainian newspaper Dzerkalo Tyzhnia did not deny that the alleged renovation works are “a tool of pressure” against Warsaw, according to TVP.
Last month, Kyiv announced that it would sue the European Union over Poland’s refusal to increase Ukraine’s number of freight permits in 2022. It argued that this was in breach of a free trade agreement.
According to Ukraine’s official statistics, Poland is the country’s second-largest trade partner after China. In the first ten months of 2021, it sent exports worth $4.4 billion to Poland, which was twice as much as it did to Russia and three times as much as to Hungary and Slovakia.
Olszewski also noted that the “surprise” restrictions would stop transit on the so-called “New Silk Road” (NJS), part of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to develop infrastructure across Asia, Europe and Africa. In 2019, Poland launched its first regular cargo connection with China.
PKP’s management has claimed that the Ukrainian move breaches the Agreement on International Goods Transport by Rail (SMGS) as well as bilateral rail transport agreements. So far, “assurances” for a speedy resolution last week have not been followed up by feedback from the Ukrainian side, said Olszewski.
Following the last meeting on 10 January, PKP said it was “counting on the fulfilment of the commitment made by the Ukrainian Railways, which undertook to effectively explain this situation on the Ukrainian side.” They called for the restoration of “regular, uninterrupted freight traffic between our countries”.
Yet further restrictions are also expected to come into force on 20 January. These would stop the import of shipments in UZ commercial wagons into Poland.
Today, members of the Solidarity trade union at PKP LHS (a subsidiary managing mostly iron ore transport) protested outside the Ukrainian consulate in the eastern Polish city of Lublin.
The event is meant to draw attention to the “failure of the Ukrainian side to comply with contracts regarding rail transport” as well as moves that could result in “transport losses of the company of up to 30%,” said a union spokeswoman.
The head of PKP LHS, Zbigniew Tracichleb, estimates that in the past two decades the Polish company has invested more than one billion zloty (€221 million) in modernising and developing its infrastructure. This, he says, “allowed the Ukrainian side to increase revenues”.
“The business relations that we have built over the years with railwaymen from Kyiv, Lviv and Kovel have resulted in a systematic increase in transported goods,” said Tracichleb. “This does not have to be the end of the development of our railways”.
Main image credit: Paul Smith/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
