Mateusz Morawiecki, the Prime Minister of Poland, has told Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, to never insult Poles (referred to as Polish people) again
Poland’s prime minister has told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to never “insult” Poles again, returning to severe verbiage towards Ukraine after Poland’s president had aimed to defuse a simmering dispute between the two countries over the matter of Ukrainian grain imports.
Zelenskyy outraged his neighbors in Poland when he told the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week that Ukraine was operating to hold land routes for its grain exports amid a Russian blocking of the Black Sea, but that “political theatre” around grain imports was supporting Moscow’s cause.
Warsaw expanded a ban last week on Ukrainian grain imports in a one-sided action that broke with a European Union ruling. The act has weakened Kyiv’s association with Poland, which has been noticed as one of its staunchest supporters since Russia raided Ukraine in February previous year.
According to the State-run news agency PAP, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told an election rally on Friday, “I … want to tell President Zelenskyy never to insult Poles again, as he did recently during his speech at the UN.”
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said earlier on Friday that the dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv over grain imports would not seriously impact good bilateral links, in an obvious move to reduce tensions.
Duda told a business conference, “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. I don’t believe that it can have a significant impact on them, so we need to solve this matter between us.”
His comments came after Prime Minister Morawiecki was reported as stating that Poland would no longer provide weapons to Ukraine amid the grain dispute.
