Russian and Belarusian trucks are stuck in long queues at the EU’s eastern borders as hauliers try to get out of the bloc, hours before a ban on their vehicles comes into force on Saturday.
Lorries are backed up for more than 40km in Poland and have been waiting between three and 10 days to leave, according to people in the logistics industry, who say thousands of trucks are affected after Brussels imposed sanctions on the Russian and Belarusian fleets.
Jan Buczek, head of Poland’s ZMPD, a trade body for Polish transport groups, said that in recent days the queue at the Koroszczyn border crossing into Belarus — which lies on the main route from Berlin to Moscow — had reached 80km.
“There is no way the Belarusian and Russian trucks will all manage to leave Polish territory by tomorrow,” he said.
According to data from Poland’s National Revenue Administration, the wait at the Koroszczyn crossing was 33 hours on Friday morning, while at the more northerly Bobrowniki checkpoint it was 56 hours. Haulage groups said there were also long queues at border crossing points in Lithuania and Latvia.
The EU introduced sanctions this month prohibiting trucks operated by
Russian or Belarusian companies from entering or remaining in the bloc, with exemptions for vehicles transporting food, medicine, mail and energy. It set a deadline of April 16 to exit the bloc.
The sanctions were part of the EU’s latest attempt to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
With customs officials making rigorous checks on vehicles crossing the border, thousands of vehicles could fail to make it out in time and would be at risk of being seized by national authorities.
The situation has been exacerbated because a crossing between Poland and Belarus at Kuznica has been closed since Belarus’s authoritarian regime orchestrated a migration crisis on its borders with the EU last winter.