Kolodziejczak: Poland should buy or lease a port in Odesa to gain access to the Black Sea

Poland should buy or lease a port in Ukraine’s Odesa to gain access to the Black Sea and export Polish and European grain there. This was stated by Polish Deputy Minister of Agriculture Michal Kolodziejczak, PolsatNews reports.

According to him, in Warsaw’s relations with Kyiv, they “must have a vision of Poland.”

“So far, I have not heard anything concrete from anyone. Why don’t we say in Poland – what I want to propose now – that the Poles talk to the Ukrainians about leasing us, for example, for 50 years or selling the pier, where the Poles can have their own grain port?” he suggested.

Kolodziejczak added that such a place could be found, for example, in Odesa.

“Where will Polish grain, European grain, go? In this way we will get access to the Black Sea, where the average (price – ed.) ton of wheat is 100 zlotys higher, because the cost of transportation to African countries is lower,“ Kolodziejczak said.

He argued that grain exported through a port under Polish control could come ”from Zamość, Lublin, Podkarpacie, where there are good lands of the first, second, third class.”

According to Kolodziejczak, Poland could transport Polish grain on the wide railroad tracks that exist in Ukraine.

Asked if he was not interfering with the competence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by developing such scenarios, he replied that he “sends his greetings to Minister Sikorski” and noted that these ideas should be passed on to the Foreign Ministry as “our conditions and needs to protect Polish agriculture.”

Miroslav Marchyniak, an independent analyst at Infograin, believes that the idea of exporting Polish grain through Odesa is not without merit.

“I talk about this myself at meetings with farmers, especially from the southeast of Poland. But we do not need a Polish port in Odesa for this. It’s enough just not to interfere with trading companies,” he wrote on social network X.

Tags: Ukraine, Poland, Black Sea region, Baltic Sea ports