Evaluating Poland’s Informal Proposal To Lease Land & Ports From Ukraine

Its most likely associated goals are ambitious but unrealistic to advance at least for now.

Polish Deputy Minister of Agriculture Michal Kolodziejczak shared his personal opinion on Polsat News in early April that Poland should lease land and ports from Ukraine for agricultural purposes. The leased land could total half a million hectares (roughly equivalent to the size of Delaware) and be used by Polish livestock companies while at least one wharf could be leased in Odessa for facilitating Polish grain exports to the Global South. Kolodziejczak’s informal proposal is driven by the pursuit of three goals.

The first is to rebalance Poland’s relations with Ukraine after Ukraine became Poland’s senior partner. This provocative description most accurately describes their ties after Poland donated more tanks, IFVs, and aircraft to Ukraine than anyone else with no strings attached and then allowed Ukraine for some time to dump its low-quality grain into the Polish market per the EU’s demands. Securing long-term leases for such strategic sites, ideally on privileged terms, would ensure that this wasn’t all for nothing.

Kolodziejczak’s second unstated goal is for Poland to obtain influence over Ukraine’s agricultural industry, but most of it is already owned by Western companies according to outgoing President Andrzej Duda. Ukraine is unlikely to break its contracts with them out of fear that the governments to which they pay taxes might then punish it by withholding aid. Poland’s only leverage is that it’s the EU’s gateway to Ukraine, but this can’t realistically be weaponized to coerce the aforesaid concessions scot-free.

And finally, he might envisage Poland deploying PMCs to guard some of this leased farmland and regularly dispatching its navy to dock at the port that it wants, which would expand Polish influence and craft the optics of restoring its lost regional power status. Russia recently warned about foreign intervention in Lvov and Odessa in particular, the two Ukrainian regions where these strategic sites could be leased, though that doesn’t mean that this might soon happen for the abovementioned reason.

All in all, Kolodziejczak’s informal proposal and its most likely associated goals are ambitious, but they’re all unrealistic at least for now. The revived Volhynia Genocide dispute and Poland’s refusal to participate in any peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, both of which might have begun as electioneering rhetoric by the ruling liberal-globalist coalition ahead of next month’s presidential election but have since taken on lives of their own, made Ukraine distrust Poland. It thus has no reason to agree to any of this.

From Ukraine’s perspective as informed by its interpretation of their shared history, Poland is a predatory state whose threat potential can only be managed by closer strategic ties with others, which adds context to the privileged position that it already gave Western companies in its agricultural industry. This strategic imperative greatly reduces the likelihood that Ukraine would go along with any Polish proposal like Kolodziejczak’s that could lead to Poland once again becoming the senior partner between them.

The best that Poland can therefore hope for is to equalize their ties, but even that’ll be a struggle since the West’s dominant position in Ukraine’s agricultural industry, the enthusiasm that some of them have for dispatching peacekeepers, and their lack of bilateral disputes place Poland at a disadvantage. That said, it’s possible that Poland might be allowed to lease a commercial wharf in Odessa after the conflict ends, but this wouldn’t be anywhere near as significant as leasing farmland the size of Delaware.