Truck traffic jam of more than 20 kilometers: Border blockades are strangling Kiev Why Hamas now also wants to strike in Europe

It is not a single traffic jam, but a series of traffic jams that are estimated to stretch for more than twenty kilometers to the Ukrainian border. The Slovak police ensure that the trailers wait neatly and close together at the side of the road.

Almost all of the trucks have a Ukrainian license plate and many drivers have been waiting a week or more before they are allowed to cross the border with Ukraine. How the drivers survive the uncertainty and cold in eastern Slovakia, often without toilets, washing facilities or hot meals, is their secret.

The local government intervenes

According to the Ukrainian Border Guard, about 1,200 trucks are stranded on the Slovak side in front of the western Ukrainian provincial capital Uzhhorod. It is not a natural traffic jam, but a politically desired traffic jam. Slovak truck drivers are blocking the border in protest against what they see as unfair competition from cheaper Ukrainian shipping companies. Sometimes they close the road to Uzhhorod, sometimes they let the heavy transport ships pass.

The Slovaks copied the blockade policy of their Polish colleagues. Since early November, small groups of Polish drivers and their tractors have blocked a total of four major border crossings into Ukraine. The result: in Poland alone, 2,600 trucks are prevented from continuing their journey, many for weeks, according to state news agency Ukrinform.

However, the protest has now been banned by local authorities at one of these border crossings and traffic there is now starting to move again. Kiev’s hopes also rest on the new pro-Ukrainian government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk. According to Ukrinform, a total of around 4,300 trucks have been blocked in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary.

A pro-Russian plot?

None of this is likely a coincidence. One of the leading figures in the Polish protest movement is a freight forwarder named Rafal Mekler. The entrepreneur belongs to the Russia-friendly Confederation of Freedom and Independence party and is chairman of the local group in Lublin, eastern Poland. In Slovakia, Russia-friendly Prime Minister Robert Fico has recently come to power, and in Hungary, where there have also been reports of major delays in border traffic, Putin-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been in charge for some time.

Passenger cars and humanitarian transport will not be blocked at the Slovak border. But we are stopped at a police station a few kilometers from customs. We are lucky: two Slovak military police cars escort three semi-trailers that look civilian, but in reality transport equipment for the Ukrainian army.

We are allowed to follow this small convoy and drive straight to the border. The formalities on both sides ultimately last three and a half hours. While we wait for new papers, stamps and checks, we talk to the drivers of the three trailers in front of us. One has loaded beds for a field hospital, while the other mischievously says “Bomba” to his cargo. There is a large sticker on the back of the tractor that warns of explosives. It’s impossible to find out what’s in the third truck.

Soviet bureaucracy of Ukrainians

But the protests of angry drivers are not the only cause of the waiting times. The Ukrainians themselves are also to blame: President Zelensky’s government launched a new electronic import system at the beginning of December. Ukrainian freight forwarders and representatives of aid organizations are shocked by this digital bureaucracy.

In fact, Ukrainian customs officials are overwhelmed by the system. No one knows exactly how it works, the men in uniform have to constantly call their superiors and ask for help. Despite digitalization, several civil servants are constantly stamping documents. Old-fashioned Soviet bureaucracy coupled with modern electronics seems like a suffocating horror mix.

There is no understanding at the front for such excesses. Most army units are urgently dependent on the import of used civilian vehicles. These cars are usually financed by private donations, but the Ukrainian state is doing everything it can to prevent their import. If Ukraine loses the war, it will not only be the West’s faltering arms supplies that will be responsible, but also Zelensky’s inability to rein in his bureaucrats. (bzbasel.ch)