Poland's leading politicians reacted to the halt to Russian gas supplies with demonstrative composure to calm the population, but also with militant tones.

President Andrzej Duda announced legal action against the Russian gas company Gazprom on Wednesday.

At the start of a parliamentary session, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki took the floor to present a "summary" of the situation amid concerns in the country.

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.

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Russia's move was "a direct attack on Poland, revenge for Warsaw's sanctions" against Russian companies.

With the gas ban, Russia "pushed the limits of imperialism, a gas imperialism, a further step forward".

So far, Russian gas had covered about half of Poland's needs.

The Russian supply stop was justified by the fact that Poland – like other EU countries – refused to pay for the gas in rubles instead of euros.

Well-stocked gas tanks

Poland has been preparing for a crisis situation like this for years, said the head of government.

He mentioned the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Świnoujście, near the border with Germany, which opened in 2015.

Thanks to its expansion, "seven to eight billion cubic meters of gas" per year could soon be landed there.

In October, the "Baltic Pipe", the underwater pipeline that connects Norwegian gas fields with Poland, will go into operation and deliver up to ten billion cubic meters.

In addition, there are 4.5 billion cubic meters from domestic production.

The gas storage facilities are also well stocked, Morawiecki said with a dig at the neighbors to the west: Poland has its own storage facilities, not those owned by Russia, which make up a large part of the storage capacity in Germany.

"Thanks to our work, Poland will no longer need any Russian gas from the fall." Morawiecki put the country's annual requirement at 20 to 21 billion cubic meters.

You now have gas in stock for at least a month and a half.

"Putin's blackmail will not affect the budgets or the situation in Poland." But Russia attacked Europe's energy and food security with the war and triggered "Puinflation".

Of course, like so many politicians from the ruling PiS these days, the speaker took the opportunity to tell only half the truth about the energy policy of the past few decades.

The liquefied gas terminal was decided in 2006 by a government of the national conservative PiS.

Under the liberal head of government Donald Tusk, who is now the leader of the opposition, construction began in 2009, and Tusk also laid the foundation stone in 2011.

At that time, the massive expansion of the gas infrastructure in the country was also tackled.

Solidarity from the Czech Republic

The expansion of gas pipelines (interconnectors) to neighboring countries has also been planned for some time.

Now, at the beginning of May, one of the last, towards Lithuania, is scheduled to go into operation.

The fact that the Tusk government was also pursuing these projects and that his party colleague Jerzy Buzek in the European Parliament pushed ahead with the rules on EU energy solidarity showed that fears of gas supplies being misused by Russia as a weapon in Poland were shared across party lines.

Poland's President Andrzej Duda also experienced Czech solidarity during a visit to Prague on Wednesday: His counterpart Miloš Zeman declared "full support for Poland in questions of Russian gas supplies".

Zeman, who used to make a name for himself as a "Putin understander", said: "The Russians violated existing contracts, both in terms of delivery dates and the form of payment." The world had "become different" as a result of this war.

Lithuania's government has indicated that the country could supply gas to its Polish neighbors if necessary;

Lithuania commissioned a floating LNG terminal on the Baltic Sea coast in 2014 to reduce dependence on Russian gas.

Warsaw government politicians recalled in parliament on Wednesday that their country had repeatedly warned its partners in the West about the growing energy dependency on Russia, "but Europe didn't want to listen to it".

Poland will continue to go its own way, for example with the planned entry into nuclear energy and the expansion of wind power and hydropower, for example on the Oder, even if the federal government wants to keep this border river as a "beautiful, wild river".

A speaker from the liberal Citizens' Platform took the opportunity to exchange blows and warned that contracts for the Baltic Pipe had only been signed for two billion cubic meters of natural gas.

Polish-Russian relations are in a deep crisis: in March, Poland expelled Russian diplomats and their families for suspected espionage activities, and in April Russia responded in the same way, affecting 45 people each time.

Both governments have frozen accounts at the embassy of their neighboring country.

The Polish Ministry of Culture decided on a well-intentioned but rightly criticized measure: Because of the "barbaric attack" on Ukraine, the Russian edition of the culture.pl portal was discontinued and a new, Ukrainian one was created instead.

A shot in the knee: The portal aims to bring Polish culture closer to people abroad.