By Jo Harper
WARSAW (AA) – Poland, one of Kyiv’s strongest advocates in its war with Russia, said on Wednesday evening that it is halting the delivery of arms to Ukraine until the grain crisis is resolved.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, we will now arm ourselves with the most modern weapons,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on the television channel Polsat News on Wednesday.
He added that Poland was "focused on the modernization and rapid armament of the Polish army" so that “it will quickly become one of the strongest in Europe.”
When asked about the grain crisis, Morawiecki said that Poland is helping in the victory “against the Russian barbarian, but the government cannot agree to the disruption of the Polish market.”
“We will definitely maintain the transit of Ukrainian goods. Poland does not incur any costs because of this. On the contrary, we can say that we make money from it,” he said.
Morawiecki added that Poland would not risk Ukraine's security. “Our hub in Rzeszow, in consultation with the Americans and NATO, continues to play the same role it has played and will continue to play,” he said.
Asked whether such anti-Ukrainian rhetoric was a domestic political ploy before the Oct. 15 election to show far-right Confederation voters the government is negotiating hard with Ukraine, Morawiecki noted: "We don't look at it that way."
“I regret that the Ukrainian oligarchs started pushing their grain onto the Polish market without taking into account the interests of Polish farmers. They caused prices to crash. We had to guarantee a price of PLN 1,400 (€360) per ton of Polish wheat – this was in the spring. We have fulfilled all our promises and I do not see threats now from Ukrainian grain, because we have blocked this import,” he added.
According to the prime minister, the government responded to the issue of grain from Ukraine "appropriately."
Asked about Polish President Andrzej Duda's words spoken in New York this week that Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person “grasping at everything,” Morawiecki said: “These are very accurate words.”