Ukraine insists on unblocking agro transit during talks with Poland - Ukrainian Agrarian Policy Ministry

MOSCOW. April 1 (Interfax) - Ukrainian and Polish agricultural associations will continue negotiations this week on the transit of grain and other agricultural products and unblocking the border, Ukrainian media reported, citing the statement from Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine's First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, posted on social media.

"It is very important that the associations of the different sectors have established a connection and will continue meetings starting this week in order to agree clearly on the parameters [for exporting and transiting Ukrainian agricultural products]. Everyone understood [at the Ukraine-Poland meeting in Poland last week] that interaction and cooperation and agreements will ultimately have the best result," Vysotsky said.

Vysotsky also said that a meeting between the Polish and Ukrainian sides is planned during the first two weeks of April in an expanded format, at which the two countries' respective farmers will seek ways to interact. As expected, this could also become the basis for agreements at the intergovernmental level. The talks will concern such product groups as raspberries, juice, honey, eggs, grain, and poultry.

"There is cautious optimism about this, which allows us to hope to set the final parameters after several more meetings, when it should be possible to resolve the matter finally," Vysotsky said.

Vysotsky also said that the issue of transit of Ukrainian grain is raised at all international meetings.

"Ukraine insists that transit must be accessible without stops and blockages," Vysotsky said.

As previously reported, the prime ministers of Ukraine and Poland, Denis Shmygal and Donald Tusk, respectively, on March 28 in Poland discussed the matters of regulating imports of Ukrainian food.

Mass protests on the part of agricultural producers have been occurring periodically in many European Union countries this year, with the producers expressing dissatisfaction with the "green" course of the European Commission, and the rise in prices for material and technical resources amid the duty-free agricultural products coming from Ukraine. Polish farmers have particularly been actively expressing dissatisfaction by blocking the movement of trucks on certain sections of the Poland-Ukraine border.