As of the morning of February 13, Polish farmers have blocked five crossing points on the border with Ukraine. There are over a thousand trucks waiting in queues.
This was announced by the spokesperson of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Andriy Demchenko, during a telethon broadcast.
"As of now, five crossing points are being blocked," he said.
According to him, yesterday until 10:00, Polish farmers were blocking two directions: "Yahodyn" and "Rava-Ruska". And after 10:00, they resumed blocking "Shehyni" and expanded the geography of their actions to the directions of the crossing points "Ustyluh" and "Uhriniv".
"Effectively, these are 5 directions where the movement for trucks is blocked on the territory of Poland," added Demchenko.
He reported that only a small number of trucks are being let through. In fact, 1-2-3 vehicles may be allowed to pass per hour in each direction, both towards Poland and away from it. "It all depends on the organizers and participants and their willingness to let vehicles through their conditional places where they block traffic. Fortunately, the movement for other categories of transport is not blocked. Passenger cars and buses freely cross the border in both directions," explained the spokesperson.
Regarding the queues, as of this morning, there are approximately 1250 freight vehicles queuing at all five directions, Demchenko reported. Most of them are opposite "Yahodyn" and "Rava-Ruska". "These are trucks on the territory of Poland waiting for the opportunity to cross the border into Ukraine," he said.
The situation is better in the direction of the crossing points "Ustyluh" and "Uhriniv", where queues are practically absent. "But each crossing point has its own peculiarities. Somewhere, trucks weighing over 7.5 tons may cross the border. That is, large vehicles. For example, in the direction of the crossing points "Ustyluh" and "Uhriniv", trucks weighing less than 7.5 tons, carrying cargo or empty trucks weighing over 7.5 tons, may cross the border," Demchenko explained.
According to him, the queue is increasing. "We also see a decrease in the number of freight vehicles that have been able to cross the border. This is particularly noticeable in the direction of the Yahodyn crossing point. On regular days when traffic was not blocked, this direction saw about 1200-1400 trucks crossing in both directions per day, and on some days even more. But for example, yesterday only 95 trucks crossed the border in this direction, 7 of which went towards Poland, and the rest towards Ukraine. The day before, the number of border crossings was around 145 trucks per day," the spokesperson said.