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Poland has been working towards becoming independent from Russian gas for a long time. The first US LNG tanker docked at Świnoujście in 2017.
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Cezary Aszkielowicz
From one day to the next, Russia stopped supplying gas to Poland and Bulgaria. But they were prepared – Poland in particular took precautions.
At first glance, the news seems dramatic. Russia cuts gas to former Eastern Bloc countries Poland and Bulgaria in the midst of the war in Ukraine. No warning, no prep time, overnight. Russia’s official justification: the two countries have so far refused to pay for deliveries in rubles, as Vladimir Putin ordered in a March decree. Now came the consequences.
But this punitive measure does not hit Poland as hard as one might expect. The EU member state has been suspicious of its eastern neighbor not only since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The Polish government has been working for several years to become independent from Russian gas. While the partially state-owned Austrian OMV extended its supply contract with Gazprom from 2018 to 2040 (although it ran until 2028), Polish state-owned oil and gas group PGNiG is letting its deal with the Russian monopolist expire at the end of the year. This means that Poland was already planning to stop buying gas from Russia anyway. Putin anticipated this project by just half a year.