Road logistics bore the brunt of the impact in the first months of the full-scale invasion. Already in September 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved an agreement between Ukraine and the European Union on road freight transportation, the so-called “transport visa-free regime”. This made it possible to establish, first of all, the export of agricultural products, which had been suspended due to the blocking of seaports, Property Times writes.
And although the transport visa-free regime was later extended, it could not become a full-fledged replacement for sea transportation. Firstly, transportation by trucks makes transportation more expensive, and secondly, the insufficient number of checkpoints causes queues and delays. And thirdly, Polish carriers are not happy about the liberalization of road transportation between Ukraine and the EU, as evidenced by their actions to block Ukrainian trucks.
Polish carriers can successfully block the exit of our trucks, which makes it impossible to move trucks. The Poles have the largest fleet of carriers, which have a strong influence on the Polish Ministry of Infrastructure. The development of the EU’s transport policy envisages a reduction in car transportation and a shift of cargo to railways.
Over the past two years, elevators have been actively built in the western regions of Ukraine. Several major logistics complexes are currently being built in Volyn with European narrow-gauge railways for fast transshipment to the EU, so that large volumes of agricultural products can be shipped immediately. The threshold for investment in the construction of a narrow-gauge transshipment facility in Ukraine is about EUR 4-6 million, depending on the site and distance to the border.
