FLASHING BLUE lights shield protesting Polish farmers from the ten km-long line of Ukrainian lorries they are holding up at the Hrebrenne-Rava Ruska border crossing. The drivers say they would waste little time in moving the protesters aside were the police not there, and there is little reason to doubt them. Huddled around a barrel fire, the farmers say they are only protecting their economic future; they do not want to be undercut by “under-regulated” Ukrainian grain. The drivers, some of whom have been waiting in freezing weather for weeks, ask what any of that has to do with the lorries carrying goods and humanitarian aid into Ukraine. No one seems to have an answer.

The border demonstrations, now five months old, have economic roots. At the start of the war, when Ukraine lost access to its deep-water ports in the Black Sea, the EU temporarily exempted Ukrainian lorry drivers from a permit system that restricts movement in and out of the bloc. That represented a challenge to Polish drivers, who had dominated the local freight business. Meanwhile a suspension of import duties and quotas on Ukrainian agricultural goods, produced by larger, more efficient outfits, posed unexpected competition to small Polish farmsteads, already pinched by EU environmental legislation. These tensions have since been compounded by a sharp decline in world grain prices as well as domestic politicking ahead of Polish local elections in April.

The protests have cost Ukraine hundreds of millions of dollars in lost agricultural and freight business. It is even worse for the drivers waiting at Hrebenne. Before the protests began they were making five trips a month; now they are lucky to make one. Strict quotas determine who is let through. At the Hrebrenne crossing it is one lorry at the turn of every hour, or four for goods that are perishable or have humanitarian value.

Yaroslav Hnativ, the driver at the front of the queue, says he has been waiting for three weeks. It has been a testing experience, having to uncouple his driving cabin every time he needs to buy food or refill his “shower,  a plastic canister he keeps tucked under his no-frills foam bunk. “I don’t understand what they want,” he says of the protesters. “They change their mind every time you speak to them.” Mr Hnativ is not alone in believing that they are in cahoots with the Kremlin.

The farmers’ protests are also fertile ground for Russian influence operations aimed at those who have misgivings about Ukraine’s potential accession to the EU—when its drivers and exporters would face no limits at all. The Kremlin used to call the divide-and-rule tactics with which it undermined the unity of its enemies “active measures”. The most successful were built on genuine grievances. Piotr Krawczyk, Poland’s spy chief from 2016 to 2022, says it would be surprising if Russia were not attempting to use similar formulas today. “Vladimir Putin is opportunistic,” he says. “When he sees a possibility to undermine cohesiveness he will use it.”

Polish journalists have connected some dots. An investigation showed that one of the protesters appeared to be connected to the Russian embassy in Warsaw. One protest banner appealed to Mr Putin to “restore order”, an unlikely message in Poland but one that generated a lot of media heat. There is also evidence of links between Russia and some members of Poland’s hard-right Confederation party, which played a role in the earlier stages of the protest. Andriy Cherniak, a spokesman for HUR, Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency, says the Kremlin is trying to work on whatever level it can. “We see it very clearly and we follow it. We doff our hats to them, to be honest. It’s impressive work.”

One Ukrainian military researcher who prefers to remain anonymous says Russia is stepping up its media-influence ambitions. Such interventions are not new. Catherine the Great employed Voltaire to write anti-Polish pamphlets. But the internet has provided new opportunities to penetrate public opinion at a fraction of the previous cost. The researcher says a recent Ukrainian exercise discovered 18,000 suspicious Facebook pages promoting fake narratives about the Polish protests—exaggerating, for example, Ukrainian corruption.

An analysis by Antibot4Navalny, an activist group that tracks Doppelganger, the Kremlin’s malign social-media influence network, tells a similar tale. It found that a network of approximately 10,000 bots retweeted one fake news story about the Polish protest, ensuring it was seen by 50,000 users. Many of the fake news stories generated by Doppelganger exaggerated points of tension between countries: Poles and Ukrainians, Germans and Ukrainians, French and Ukrainians.

What impact these operations have is less clear. Colonel Taras Dzyuba of the strategic-communications department of Ukraine’s general staff says that the Russians are playing a long game. “They rarely achieve results immediately, but wear down people’s defences so they become willing to hear new sources of information.” Other intelligence sources inside Ukraine and Poland suggest that Russia has played a secondary role in the Polish protests. “A lot of people have been rewarded with new stars on their epaulettes,” says one high-level Ukrainian source. “They told Putin they organised everything. I wouldn’t exaggerate it.”

Intense negotiations at the EU level offer hope that the border problem can be resolved. On March 27th Krzysztof Paszczyk, leader of the Polish People’s’ Party, part of the governing coalition, announced that Ukraine and Poland were close to a compromise on agricultural imports that would appease the farmers and allow the EU to reach an agreement on extending duty-free trade with Ukraine.

But even if a solution is found, the protest has caused a lot of damage to the countries’ relations. At the start of the war Poland and Ukraine were united as blood brothers against a common enemy. The Poles took in refugees and slipped MIG fighter jets over the border, disguising them as spare parts. Now many Poles see Ukraine as corrupt, or even as a dangerous competitor. And many Ukrainians see Poles as an impediment to their survival. Confusion and distrust reign. And even if the idea that Russia has had a hand is exaggerated, it has poisoned the well further. ■