Kyiv decries awards ceremony deaths – DW – 11/06/2023

Polish heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers blocked three border crossings to Ukraine on Monday. 

They were protesting what they say is a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a lack of action against it by the government in Warsaw.  

The dispute is similar to one led by Polish farmers earlier in the war, upset at what they saw as pressure on their domestic market as a result of increased imports from Ukraine that might in peacetime have been exported further afield by sea.

Truckers from Ukraine have been exempt from seeking permits to cross the Polish border since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. And the Polish truckers say that Russian and Belarusian companies have also been setting up entities inside Poland to keep a foothold in the EU. 

They were demanding a reintroduction of restrictions on the number of Ukraine-registered HGVs entering Poland, and a ban on transport companies with capital from outside the EU in Poland. 

Oleksandr Kubrakov, a minister in Ukraine’s government’s Ministry for the Restoration of Ukraine with responsibility among other things for infrastructure, said that Kyiv was working with the Polish government and the European Commission to resolve the situation. 

“Our official position is that blocking the border harms the interests and economies of both countries. It also affects the functioning of the Solidarity Lines which intended to export [Ukrainian] agricultural products. At the same time, we are ready for a constructive dialogue that will consider the interests of the carriers of both countries,” Kubrakov said.

Ukraine’s ambassador in Warsaw, Vasyl Zvarych, had earlier called the border blockage a “painful stab in the back” for Kyiv. 

Russian aerial strikes in Odesa wounded eight people and significantly damaged a historic art museum.

Images seemed to show the art from Odesa Fine Arts Museum, in the southern part of Ukraine, ripped off the walls with windows blown out following an overnight bombardment.

Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzheppar called on the United Nations’ Paris-based heritage agency UNESCO to condemn the strike. 

A lot of the collection usually housed at the museum had been removed during the war, according to the governor of the Odesa region, Oleg Kiper.

Kyiv said that Russian forces had launched four missiles and nearly multiple attack drones from occupied regions of the country in the south overnight.

Multiple Ukrainian soldiers have been killed after a Russian missile strike hit a military “awards ceremony” in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.

Exact numbers on those killed in the attack differ, with soldiers from the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade said to have those being honoured at the ceremony.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lamented the avoidable loss of life, saying: “This is a tragedy that could have been avoided. A criminal investigation has been registered into the tragedy.”

“The main thing is to establish the full truth about what happened and to prevent this from happening again.”

One Ukrainian soldier took to social media to criticize commanders for having held the ceremony 

“Everyone is writing that ‘Heroes died’. Although it is more appropriate to write ‘Heroes became victims’,” soldier Ivan Savytskyy said. “They became victims of military rudimentary traditionalism in its worst form.”

km/jcg (AFP, dpa, AP, Reuters)