Zelensky: Romania helped Ukraine survive Polish agrifood export blockade

MOSCOW. Dec 20 (Interfax) - Romania helped Ukraine survive while Poland was blocking Ukrainian agrifood exports, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said.

"Thank God, a wise Romania came forward, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis simply helped me. He helped our farmers to survive," Ukrainian media quoted Zelensky as saying at a press conference in Kiev on Tuesday.

Considering that the Polish government has changed since then, Zelensky said he expected the grain blockade problem would be settled.

"I've had a contact with [Polish] President [Andrzej] Duda [...] We've smoothed this situation out. A new government. I'll believe that the new government will unfreeze this whole blockade. It's artificial," he said.

"It's wrong to politicize the grain issue when we've gotten everything blocked," he said.

"Look, it was really hard from April to September, we lost hundreds of millions of dollars, we lost part of the harvest, we were losing it every day. And our farmers would ask me every day, 'How could we export at least something?' And that's what happened, and we began losing our political relations," Zelensky said.

While thanking the Polish people for support given to Ukraine, Zelensky said he was defending his country's interests. "I said, just let us take it out of the country, but they wouldn't. And that was the wrong thing to do. Just wrong," he said.