Opinion: Ukraine’s closest neighbours using conflict to their advantage

The blocking of three checkpoints on the Polish-Ukrainian border continues, with Kiev having already calculated the losses from the protests: Ukraine lost $860m in exports and imports in a month. In his talk with Alfa Radio, Dean of the Journalism Department at the Belarusian State University Aleksei Belyaev speculated about the conflict between the closest neighbours.

He cited figures for Ukraine’s losses because of the blocking of checkpoints, “They have lost $160m in exports of what they could have sent there, and failed to deliver the remaining €700m. We see that the West and even Ukraine’s closest neighbours are using this conflict primarily in their own interests. Poland is an excellent example. This is ostentatious friendship with a grudge and a knife in the pocket, when people had already crushed part of Ukraine, forcing its leadership to pass laws enabling Poles to have access to government positions. Now they are unhappy that the EU did not provide certain preferences in road transportation to Ukrainians. And now all the fuss is due to the fact that Poland demands to deprive of these preferences.”

Aleksei Belyaev noted that Ukrainians are practically being expelled from Europe, being deprived of the opportunity to use housing and receive benefits for free, as before, “Europe is already sobering up, it is running out of resources. Therefore, Europeans demand that Ukrainians support themselves. Those who can’t, should return back to their homeland. All this talk about the return of Ukrainians under mobilisation plans back to their homeland shows the true essence of the attitude of Europeans. It’s now evident that for the European leadership it was an opportunity to do business, to make money where it was impossible, and where it is clear that refugees are interfering, they begin to actively oppose it. The assistance comes primarily from the military: the supply of weapons and support for the army. But to what extent this assistance affects the lives of ordinary Ukrainians, to what extent they are suffering today from this war into which they were drawn, and are not receiving any profit, this is also clear to everyone.”