By Athena Papakosta

Poland announces it will stop supplying Ukraine with weapons. Reason? The grains. Cause; The elections in the country. Let’s take the things from the beginning.

It is a fact that Poland is the Member State of the European Union which has supported Ukraine like no other. Warsaw has sent Kiev the most Soviet-era tanks and fighters as well as other weapons, claiming the title of Zelensky’s staunchest ally on European soil.

What went so wrong that the Polish Prime Minister announced in a TV interview that now “we will not transfer any weapons to Ukraine”?

For a week now, tension has been building between Ukraine and Poland due to the decision of the European Commission to lift the ban on imports of Ukrainian agricultural products in five Member States. These are Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. The first three countries did not comply with the Commission’s decision and decided to extend the import bans.

Kiev appealed to the World Trade Organization, and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky himself, from New York and the UN emphasized that “some Member States are hindering solidarity in Ukraine” and with their attitude “indirectly, they are helping Russia” .

Warsaw’s reaction was immediate as it called for an explanation from the Ukrainian ambassador stressing that Zelensky’s position is a “false claim” reminding that “Poland has supported Ukraine since the first days of the war”.

But then the country’s prime minister took the floor and made it clear that his country will no longer offer weapons to Kiev as, as he explained, “we will mainly focus on the modernization and rapid equipping of the Polish army in order to become one of the most powerful land armies in Europe’. Of course, he didn’t explain how one negates the other.

In three weeks from today, on October 15, Poland has a national election, and the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) is, according to the polls, under pressure.

In particular, as Politico reports, the main reason for Morawiecki’s decision is the fact that many Polish farmers are expected to vote in favor of the far-right Confederacy, the Confederation for Freedom and Independence (Konf), remaining skeptical of Warsaw’s previously staunch stance on the side of Kiev.

Already the head of the extreme right in the country, Slavomir Medsen, after Ukraine’s appeal to the WTO, had declared: “the Ukrainians ruthlessly took advantage of the Polish government, making a fool of it and (…) now they will declare a trade war against us.”

Consequently, analysts characterize Morawiecki’s turn as a desperate electoral ploy.

Polls in the country also show that the Polish people remain in favor of Ukraine as they fear that their country will be vulnerable if Russia succeeds in winning its war. But at the same time, the pollsters also see a fatigue among the voters due to the very high number of refugees from Ukraine in Poland.

Donald Tusk, the leader of the centre-right Political Platform (OP) party, which is coming in second in the race, accused Morawiecki of being responsible for a “moral and geopolitical scandal that politically stabs Ukraine in the back”.

The 180-degree turn of the Polish prime minister simultaneously damages, according to experts, one of the strongest cards of his election campaign, the foreign policy of his government which had made Brussels “forget” the pathologies in the rule of law, in press freedom and Poland’s democratic backsliding.

For its part, Washington, acknowledging the pre-election turmoil in the country, says that Morawiecki’s statements are not a sign of a break in the unity of the West and that it expects to continue to see Warsaw lead efforts to provide assistance to Kiev.