Home › Politics › Why Warsaw and Kyiv clashed on 20 September 2023
Why Warsaw and Kyiv clashed on 20 September 2023
Summary
A retrospective on a day when Poland summoned Ukraine's ambassador and its prime minister announced an end to weapons supplies.
What turned a dispute over grain into a diplomatic confrontation between two close allies? On 20 September 2023, the Polish Foreign Ministry summoned Vasyl Zvarych, Ukraine's ambassador to Poland, to deliver a strong protest over remarks by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the United Nations General Assembly. Zelenskyy had said that the actions of some European countries indirectly help Russia, and the statement drew condemnation from Poland.
The same day, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that Poland would stop supplying Ukraine with weapons. The announcement came amid tensions between the two countries over Poland's import ban on Ukrainian agricultural products.
A domestic backdrop
The row unfolded during a Polish election campaign. On 19 September 2023, a day before the summons, documents allegedly from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs were reported to show that the Polish embassy in Minsk had issued 784,173 visas to individuals from 65 countries with the aid of a Moscow-based company. People denied entry at the Belarus–European Union border during the border crisis may also have received visas. The affair was part of the political climate around the 2023 Polish parliamentary election.
What it showed
In the space of a day, a speech in New York, a trade ban and a weapons pledge became tied together in one bilateral dispute. Warsaw's reaction combined a formal diplomatic protest with a public announcement on arms, while the agricultural import ban remained the stated source of friction.
