One of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, Poland, has said it is no longer supplying weapons to its neighbour, as a diplomatic dispute over grain escalates.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland’s focus was instead on defending itself with more modern weapons.
Poland has already sent Ukraine 320 Soviet-era tanks and 14 MiG-29 fighter jets and has little more to offer.
However, the remarks coincide with high tensions between the two neighbours.
On Tuesday, Poland summoned Ukraine’s ambassador over comments made by President Volodymyr Zelensky at the United Nations after Poland, Hungary and Slovakia extended a ban on Ukrainian grain.
Mr Zelensky said it was alarming how some of Ukraine’s friends in Europe were playing out solidarity “in a political theatre – making a thriller from grain”. Warsaw denounced his words as “unjustified concerning Poland, which has supported Ukraine since the first days of the war”.
Mr Morawiecki was interviewed on Wednesday night by the private Polsat news TV channel hours after the Ukrainian ambassador had been summoned to the foreign ministry in Warsaw in response to the Ukrainian leader’s speech.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” the prime minister said.
He was adamant Poland was helping Ukraine defeat the “Russian barbarian” by maintaining a military hub, but would not agree to Poland’s markets being destabilised by grain imports, Polish news agency Pap reported.
“Our hub in Rzeszow, in agreement with the Americans and Nato, is fulfilling the same role the whole time as it has fulfilled and will fulfil.”
Poland’s military has depleted its own military by about a third through transfers to Ukraine and is in the process of replacing it with modern Western-produced hardware.
Arms exports to Ukraine will not stop completely as Polish manufacturer PGZ is due to send about 60 Krab artillery weapons in the coming months.
Asked about the prime minister’s comments, Polish state assets minister Jacek Sasin told Radio Plus on Thursday that “at the moment it is as the prime minister said – in the future we will see”.
BBC / Titilayo Kupoliyi
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