Poles and Ukrainians are at loggerheads. That’s good news for Putin

FLASHING BLUEEUEU lights shield protesting Polish farmers from the ten km-long line of Ukrainian lorries they are holding up at the Hrebenne-Rava Ruska border crossing. The drivers say they would waste little time in moving the protesters aside were the police not there. Huddled around a barrel fire, the farmers say they are only protecting their economic future; they do not want to be undercut by “under-regulated” Ukrainian grain. The drivers, some of whom have been waiting in freezing weather for weeks, ask what that has to do with the lorries carrying goods and humanitarian aid into Ukraine, which are also being held up. No one has an answer.The border demonstrations, now five months old, have economic roots. At the start of the war, when Ukraine lost access to its deep-water ports in the Black Sea, the temporarily exempted Ukrainian lorry drivers from a permit system that restricts movement in and out of the bloc. That upset Polish drivers, who had dominated the local freight business. Meanwhile a suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian farm goods, produced by larger, more efficient outfits, posed competition to small Polish farmsteads, already pinched by environmental laws. A slump in world grain prices, plus politicking ahead of Polish local elections in April, heightened the tension.