Lithuania is taking seriously Polish farmers’ plans to block a road on the Lithuanian-Polish border and wants to check whether its Ukrainian grain import figures match data from the Ukrainian-Polish border, Agriculture Minister Kęstutis Navickas has said.
“We agreed on two things with the Polish minister yesterday. We now have a direct channel to exchange what is going on, and the other thing is that we have additionally asked the Ukrainian-Polish border to help us find out the number of declared cargoes to Lithuania, and we will compare it with our data,” Navickas told LRT RADIO on Tuesday.
According to him, however, suspicions that Ukrainian grain coming from Poland to Lithuania is being returned or processed and exported again as Lithuanian production seem unfounded.
“If we reduce the whole subject to the so-called ‘grain carousel’ – what Lithuania is accused of – [...] there would be the signs, and we do not see these signs either on our side or on the Polish side,” the minister said.
In his words, smuggling of grain and falsifying documents is not profitable because the risk is high, and the volume/price ratio is low.
“In smuggling a load that is relatively cheap in terms of volume the risk is disproportionately high compared to, for example, cigarettes. The penalties for organising smuggling are enormous and the carrier, if he is already taking a risk, must know what he is risking,” Navickas noted.
He also pointed out that since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, part of the Russian agricultural production has been replaced by the Ukrainian one.
“The fact that there are Ukrainian hauliers doesn’t mean that they are here illegally. It is clear that there is an increase in the flow of Ukrainian cargo since the invasion because the conditions have changed,” the minister said.
On March 1, Polish farmers are planning to start two new blockades: at the Polish-German border crossing in Świecko and on the road at the former Budzisko-Kalvarija crossing on the border with Lithuania. The blockade is expected to last for about a week.
A few weeks ago, Warsaw succeeded in quelling a similar two-month blockade by Polish farmers. However, they launched a new wave of protests last Tuesday, blocking around 100 roads to the Ukrainian border.
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