KYIV (Reuters) – The first 30 lorries passed through the newly opened Uhryniv-Dolhobychuv crossing on the Ukrainian-Polish border, which Kyiv expects will unblock main land corridors amid protests by Polish drivers, Ukraine’s border service said on Monday.
Those protests, over what Polish truckers see as unfair competition from their Ukrainian peers, started on Nov. 6, with four border crossings now under blockade.
Polish hauliers’ main demand is to stop Ukrainian truckers having permit-free access to the EU, something that Kyiv and Brussels say is impossible.
“As of the morning of December 4, border guards cleared 30 heavy vehicles with a total permissible weight of more than 7.5 (metric) tons for departure from Ukraine at the Uhryniv checkpoint,” the service said on Telegram messaging app.
The crossing was opened at 1.00 a.m. (midnight GMT) on Monday.
Ukraine said last week it had agreed some measures with Poland that could ease the pressure at the blockaded border crossings, but that the main demands of the protests had not been discussed.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
