Poland will keep processing buses leaving Ukraine through the Shehyni-Medyka checkpoint this summer despite a planned 17-month closure for repairs. Vice Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba announced the reversal on Telegram on 11 June.

Lviv Customs had said the day before that traffic from Ukraine to Poland through the crossing would be suspended from 15 June until November 2027. Shehyni-Medyka is the busiest road link between the two countries.

The about-face followed urgent talks between Ukraine's Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories and the Polish Ministry of the Interior and Administration. Warsaw's Polish Embassy in Kyiv has not issued a public comment.

"Bus traffic through the 'Shehyni–Medyka' checkpoint will not be halted during the summer season, even while the repair work is being carried out." — Oleksiy Kuleba, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, 11 June 2026

A border managed under cooling political weather

The bus reversal was, narrowly, a technical fix. However, it landed in a year when Polish-Ukrainian relations had visibly cooled.

President Karol Nawrocki, elected in June 2025 on a "Poland First" platform, vetoed extensions of Ukrainian refugee benefits in August. He signed legislation in February ending the special-status regime that had governed Ukrainian residency since 2022.

Most recently, Nawrocki called for Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be stripped of Poland's Order of the White Eagle. The trigger was a Ukrainian Special Operations unit named for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Public sentiment has shifted alongside Nawrocki. Just 48 percent of Poles still back accepting Ukrainian refugees, against 46 percent opposed, according to a January 2026 CBOS survey. That is the lowest figure recorded since Russia's full-scale invasion.

Furthermore, hate crimes against Ukrainians in Poland rose 49 percent between 2023 and 2025, The New Republic reported in April. Critically, Russia's Avanhard military camp near Volgograd remains active. More than 900 Ukrainian children passed through there for two-week shifts in 2026 alone.

Bus diplomacy meets bus politics

Polish haulers and farmers blockaded crossings repeatedly from late 2023 through 2024. They cited competition from Ukrainian carriers and grain imports. Two Ukrainian drivers died waiting in queues during the November 2023 blockade. In July 2025, Kyiv tightened Shehyni-Medyka registrations to scheduled bus routes only, citing summer overload.

A parallel dispute shows how bus traffic itself can become politicized. Earlier this week, Polish sister city Kielce refused to transfer 20-year-old municipal buses to Vinnytsia. Kielce cited a Vinnytsia street named after Stepan Bandera. Vinnytsia faces regular Russian strikes.

By contrast, the Shehyni-Medyka rollback suggests institutional cooperation can still hold even when sentiment frays. Polish construction firm Unibep signed a turnkey contract in October 2025 to modernize the same crossing. EU Entry/Exit System–compatible gates and 40 percent higher passenger throughput are targeted by Q2 2027.

For now, summer passenger traffic continues. Whether the Shehyni-Medyka corridor stays open through the autumn repair phase remains the next test of bilateral patience.

Three years after Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant on 6 June 2023, the real death toll remains unknown. At least 34 people were killed, 80 settlements were flooded, and nearly 4,000 people were evacuated according to official figures, Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister for Reconstruction Oleksii Kuleba says.

Kuleba calls the destruction "one of the largest war crimes of Russia against people and the environment."

Who blew up Kakhovka dam? 

Russian forces occupied the dam complex at the moment of the explosion. According to the investigation by The New York Times, the destruction required substantial quantities of explosives placed inside the dam structure — access that only Russian forces had. Ukraine's Prosecutor General referred the case to the International Criminal Court within days, but no ICC determination has been issued specifically on the Kakhovka HPP.

The downstream effects of the destruction — flooded villages, lost Black Sea ecosystems, drinking-water crises across Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts, and the disappearance of the Kakhovka Reservoir itself — continue to shape life across southern Ukraine.

Immediate human cost

"Three years ago, Russian forces destroyed the dam and the Kakhovka Reservoir. At least 34 people died, but the true number of victims is still unknown," Kuleba says.

Death toll estimates vary significantly across sources, in part because Russian forces continue to control the left-bank Kherson Oblast areas most devastated by the flooding.

In the days following the destruction, Ukrainian emergency services, police, medics, and volunteers worked around the clock to evacuate civilians from flooded settlements. Over 500 municipal workers from various Ukrainian regions assisted with the recovery alongside energy and gas utility crews.

$14 billion in damage and Black Sea consequences

The Kakhovka Reservoir was the largest on the Dnipro River, holding 18 cubic kilometers of water, which was released over 3 to 4 days through the breach. A Post-Disaster Needs Assessment jointly prepared by Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers and the United Nations originally estimated total losses at over $11 billion.

Former Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrii Melnyk called the destruction "the worst environmental catastrophe in Europe since the Chornobyl disaster," per CBC News.

This triggers the tooltip