Poland’s PM Tells Ukraine’s Zelensky to “Never Insult” Polish People Again

By Staff, Agencies

Poland’s prime minister has told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to never “insult” Poles again, returning to harsh rhetoric towards Kiev after the Polish president had sought to defuse a simmering dispute between the two countries over the issue of Ukrainian grain imports.

Zelensky angered his neighbors in Warsaw when he told the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week that Kiev was working to preserve land routes for its grain exports amid a Russian blockade of the Black Sea, but that “political theatre” around grain imports was helping Moscow’s cause.

Poland extended a ban last week on Ukrainian grain imports in a unilateral move that broke with a European Union ruling. The move has shaken Kiev’s relationship with Warsaw, which has been seen as one of its staunchest allies since Russia carried out its special military operation in Ukraine in February last year.

“I … want to tell President Zelensky never to insult Poles again, as he did recently during his speech at the UN,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told an election rally on Friday, according to the State-run news agency PAP.

Earlier on Friday, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said the dispute between Poland and Ukraine over grain imports would not significantly affect good bilateral relations, in an apparent move to ease tensions.

“I have no doubt that the dispute over the supply of grain from Ukraine to the Polish market is an absolute fragment of the entire Polish-Ukrainian relations,” Duda told a business conference. “I don’t believe that it can have a significant impact on them, so we need to solve this matter between us.”

Duda’s comment followed after Prime Minister Morawiecki was reported as saying that Poland would no longer send weapons to Ukraine amid the grain dispute.

“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said on Wednesday, according to a local media report.

Poland is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on October 15, and Morawiecki’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice [PiS] party has come in for criticism from the far right for what it says is the government’s subservient attitude to Kiev.