On Saturday, March 19, on the Polish-Belarusian border, activists resumed the blockade of trucks traveling from Europe to Belarus and the Russian Federation.
According to the announcement, the blockade takes place under the slogan: No trade with Russia! It must last at least two days – March 19-20.
The blockade of Russian and Belarusian trucks takes place near the Kukuriki-Kozlovichi checkpoint on the border between Poland and Belarus.
The purpose of the blockade – draw attention to the inadmissibility of trade between the EU and the Russian Federation during a full-scale war in Ukraine, when Russian troops bomb Ukrainian cities and kill civilians.
– We demand an immediate cessation of EU trade with Russia! Every commodity, every euro that supports the Russian economy today is killing Ukrainians. We can stop this! We call on all Poles, opinion leaders and non-governmental organizations to join the protest, — underlined in the announcement of the blockade.
The action was co-organized by public organizations and associations, in particular Euromaidan-Warsaw, Ukrainian World , Ukrainians in Poland and others. The initiators organized buses from Warsaw for those who want to participate in the blockade.
As Natalya Panchenko, one of the organizers of the action, informed, today there are much more participants in the blockade than it was last time. In addition to Ukrainians, Poles and Belarusians joined the action.
The other day, Panchenko said that the last time the blockade was held for three days. During this time, a line of trucks with a length of more than 40 km was formed. However, later the Polish police pushed all the protesters aside and began to let the trucks pass.
This time, according to Panchenko, the activists took official permission to hold the action, and therefore the police have no right to interfere.
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According to another participant Yevgeny Klimakina, if last week several dozen people blocked the trucks, today there are several hundred. According to his estimates, the line of trucks is already several tens of kilometers.
At the same time, Irina Zemlyana, a media expert at the Mass Information Institute (IMI), reported that as of 16.30 the activists let only three trucks with animals through, the blockade of the rest continues.
– This is our principled position to let trucks with animals pass. There are no more trucks… We don’t see trucks, because the police have created a buffer zone of several kilometers between us in order to avoid collisions. There are many police cars hidden in the forests. The queue of trucks is more than 30 km long,” she said.
As you know, last week several dozen people blocked the movement of trucks with Russian and Belarusian registration numbers leaving Poland. As a result, a multi-kilometer line of trucks formed, which, despite the sanctions, tried to smuggle European goods into the aggressor country.
According to the deputy of the Polish Seimas Michal Szczerba, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, since February 24 , and as of March 8, about 22.6 thousand trucks entered Belarus from Poland.
Today, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called on the European Commission for further sanctions and a complete blocking of trade with Russia.
