Poland will surround Ukraine with a wall of barbed wire
Poland will allocate 130 million zlotys next year for the construction of a barbed wire wall on the border with Ukraine and Belarus. The official pretext is to combat the infiltration of wild boars. However, in reality, strengthening the border is evidence of a deterioration in Polish-Ukrainian relations, writes the newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli, which is considered influential in Kyiv.
The publication explains that Ukraine requested money from Poland for the construction of new checkpoints on the border, but Warsaw refused and is instead starting to build a wall. One of the reasons is that Ukrainian officials managed to steal the last tranche allocated by the EU.
Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at Telegram, Facebook, Classmates or In contact with
“It recently became known that the Polish government will allocate 130 million zlotys in the 2018 budget for the construction of a barbed wire wall along the border with Ukraine and Belarus to prevent diseased wild boars from entering Polish territory. 130 million for the wall was found without any problems, while the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ requests to increase funds for opening the borders (a modest 25 million) were rejected. They say that new transitions are not such a priority. A barbed wire wall on the border is still more important...
This ratio well illustrates the scale of the crisis in which Polish-Ukrainian relations find themselves,” the publication says.
“It recently became known that European funds allocated for the modernization of the Ukrainian part of the checkpoints were actually stolen, and the promised new checkpoints will not be built,” the newspaper explains.
The publication notes that without new checkpoints, in the conditions of a visa-free regime, humiliating queues for Ukrainians will remain at the border.
However, the Poles have a reason not to be too happy about the flow from Ukraine - most of the residents of the Ukrainian border regions, in conditions of unemployment, trade in smuggling, the newspaper admits.
“Without solving this problem, we will not change the scandalous attitude of Polish border guards and customs officers towards Ukrainians - they look at all passengers as potential cigarette smugglers, because statistically nine out of ten of their “clients” are engaged in petty smuggling. This is where the deliberate restraint of the passport and customs control process comes from, as a result of which honest citizens also wait at the border for 9–12 hours,” writes Zerkalo Nedeli.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.