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What did Minsk and Warsaw signal by 18 September 2023?
Summary
A look back at two regional political moves reported in the days before 18 September 2023, one on security alignments and one on grain trade.
What was shaping Ukraine's neighbourhood politics on 18 September 2023? Two reports from the preceding days offered markers, one about alliances and one about trade.
On 15 September 2023, Belarus's president, Alexander Lukashenko, proposed a three-way alliance between Belarus, Russia and North Korea. He did so during a meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, in Sochi. The reports presented it as a proposal, and none described any agreement.
Two days earlier, on 13 September 2023, Poland's prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, called on the European Union to extend its embargo on imports of Ukrainian corn, wheat, sunflower and rapeseed. The appeal came from a neighbour of Ukraine, and it concerned agricultural exports.
Two different pressures
Taken together, the reports showed the war's regional politics running on two tracks. In Sochi, the talk was of closer alignment among states opposed to Kyiv's position. In Warsaw's case, the issue was a trade restriction affecting Ukrainian farm exports, with the prime minister asking for it to be prolonged at EU level.
The two items are separate and the reports did not link them. They do illustrate how the invasion was producing both security-driven and economic-driven political moves around Ukraine in mid-September 2023.
