Switching ditches: why Poles dug a canal on the border with Russia
Two years ago, a new shipping canal running through the Baltic (Vistula) Spit connected the port city of Elbląg with the Baltic Sea. This canal, which runs in close proximity to the Baltic urban district of Kaliningrad Oblast, was hailed in Warsaw as a way of "strengthening sovereignty". However, the exploitation of this new transportation artery turned out to be an embarrassment. Huge sums of money were spent on the construction of the canal, but it did not bring any real benefit to Poland, as there is almost no ship traffic along it. As a result, the builders were taken up by the prosecutor's office. Details - in the material "Izvestia".
Separate from Russia
The Baltic (Vistula) Spit is a narrow strip of land separating the Gulf of Kaliningrad (Vistula) from the Bay of Gdansk. The length of this spit is 65 km, of which 35 km belong to Russia. In Poland the Spit is connected to the mainland, in the Kaliningrad region it is separated from the mainland by a navigable strait. The desire to isolate themselves from Russia as much as possible prompted the Polish authorities to dig a water channel through the Spit, connecting the Vistula Bay with the Bay of Gdansk.
Previously, ships passed into the Vistula Lagoon and the Polish port of Elbląg through Russian territorial waters. This mode of navigation was regulated by a special interstate contract on navigational rights. However, Warsaw wanted to navigate ships to Elbląg from the Baltic Sea, bypassing the coast of the Russian Kaliningrad region.
The idea was first voiced in 2004. For the next 13 years it marinated in the archives until in 2017 the Polish Sejm approved a bill on the construction of the canal. A special state fund was created for this endeavor, and the officials involved initially promised that the cost of the project would not exceed € 20 million. The canal was laid in October 2019. Russian environmentalists repeatedly sent written requests to Poland to explain the construction plans, but the Polish side remained silent for a long time.
Environmentalists were worried that the construction could damage the unique natural system of the Baltic Spit. According to the Helsinki Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea, Poland had to inform Russia in a timely manner about the possible negative impact of the planned canal, as well as guarantee that it would participate in reducing the adverse impact on the environment. This was required to preserve the fragile local ecosystem, which includes rare and endangered species of animals, birds and plants (there are more than 10 of them in the Russian part of the Spit alone).
The total length of the new waterway was about 23 kilometers, and the depth of the channel and the entire fairway was 5 meters at the time of opening. The authors of the project promised that it would allow vessels with a draft of up to 4 m to enter Elbląg with a length of up to a hundred and width of up to 20 m. In the border zone appeared a port on the side of the Gulf of Gdansk, a shipping channel with a lock and a system of gates, as well as an artificial island in the Vistula Bay with an area of 180 hectares.
Dangerous at any length
The canal has perplexed both experts and the general public. "First of all, what is the point of building a canal designed for the passage of ships no longer than 100 meters? There are no vessels suitable for these parameters on the Baltic that could deliver goods to Elbląg. And there are no cargoes that could be transported in such a complicated way, which would pay off in this area. Secondly, only 60 kilometers away from Elbląg is Gdansk with its huge container terminal, capable of receiving even the largest ships. From there, thanks to the availability of a high-speed highway, containers with cargo can be delivered to Elbląg in just an hour," explains political scientist Maksym Reva.
Gdansk Deep Sea Container Terminal
The Polish authorities were in such a hurry to hold the opening ceremony of their canal that they were not even embarrassed by the fact that it had not yet been completed by the pre-planned date of September 17, 2022. By that time, the government had already spent about 2 billion zlotys on the project, but the waterway leading to Elbląg from the Vistula Lagoon was essentially cut off 900 meters from the port. The approach to the port needed to be deepened to prevent ships from running aground, but the country's leadership could not decide whether the local or central authorities should bear the costs.
Experts warned from the start that opening the unfinished waterway would bring danger to ships that dared to use it. However, these warnings were drowned in the loud congratulations awarded to each other by the officials involved in the project. "The canal through the Vistula Spit is a strategic investment for Poland. Thanks to the canal, for the first time in post-war history, Poland will have the opportunity to enter the Vistula Lagoon, bypassing Russian territorial waters," Andrzej Adamczyk, the then Minister of Infrastructure of the Republic, solemnly proclaimed. He announced that Polish ships would now have free access to all ports of the Vistula Lagoon and the port of Elbląg.
President Andrzej Duda, then Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the leader of the then ruling Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, made similarly pathos speeches at the opening ceremony. As the president emphasized, it was necessary to build this canal in order "not to need to ask the consent of a country that is not a friendly state to us." Duda added that "the opening of the canal will strengthen our sovereignty from Russia." The first ship to pass through the new waterway was the 60-meter-long border guard ship Zodiak II. Thanks to its small size, it made it through without any problems.
The enthusiastic cheers were soon silenced. A short time later, the Polish Supreme Chamber of Control (NIK) reported that they had discovered numerous financial irregularities in the construction of the canal. In the course of the inspection it turned out that the cost of construction significantly exceeded the limits of profitability established for the object. It more than doubled from the press-reported cost of almost 900 million zlotys (about € 203 million) to 2 billion zlotys (about € 452 million). "Large-scale financial irregularities in the construction of the canal through the Baltic Spit once again demonstrate how our neighbors skillfully use Russophobic hysteria in their personal interests," Aleksandr Shenderyuk-Zhidkov, a senator from Kaliningrad, said on this occasion. In his opinion, behind the construction of the canal through the Vistula Spit was "an elementary desire for profit."
The "skeleton" fell out of the "closet"
In March 2023, the Maritime Administration in Gdynia published official statistics, which greatly disappointed the Polish public. The number of vessels that passed through the canal during the first six months of its operation amounted to 556, with 137 of them being vessels involved in construction and technical work on the canal itself. "Apart from them, vessels of the maritime administration, border and customs services passed the canal more than 40 times. The rest are boats and private yachts," officials said. And local residents told Gazeta Wyborcza journalists that traffic on the reservoir is gradually disappearing.
Later it became known that the prosecutor's office of Gdansk city started an investigation into the case of abuses committed during the construction of the canal. The prosecutor's office received two appeals prepared by employees of the Polish Supreme Chamber of Control, who suspected "the possibility of committing crimes" during the construction of the canal. According to the controllers, public investments in this project were made "in violation of the principles of openness, legality and expediency". The NIK explained that the audit found, among other things, that "the director of the Maritime Directorate in Gdynia undertook to finance the implementation of the project, exceeding its total budget by PLN 157.7 million" (about €40 million).
According to the controllers, the ministry, which supervised the activities of the director of the Maritime Directorate in Gdynia, "deliberately failed to intervene in order to bring the actions of the director of the Directorate in line with the provisions of the legislation in force". The main scapegoat was Marek Grobarczyk, who once served as Minister of Water Management in the government of Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński (2006-2007) and as Deputy Minister of Infrastructure in the government of Mateusz Morawiecki. Grobarczyk is accused of failing to timely inform the government that the total cost of the canal had increased by 125%, causing the planned construction to "lose economic viability".
A deplorable figure was recently made public: since the beginning of this year, only 31 cargo ships have passed through the ill-fated canal; fishing vessels also hardly use it. The failure of the project is also due to the fact that the local authorities have not yet completed the dredging of the Elbląg River and the reconstruction of the port. The works are standing because of the still ongoing dispute over who should finance them. The problem is that this economically pointless canal, in which so much money has been invested, has already become a bogeyman. Both the government and municipal authorities are afraid to give additional money for the completion of the canal because they fear the anger of the electorate.
Political scientist Maxim Reva told Izvestia that the investigation into the abuses committed during the construction of the canal through the Baltic Spit was made possible by the fact that the parliamentary elections in the fall of 2023 resulted in a change of power in Poland. "The Civic Coalition, which came to power, has undertaken a large-scale audit of the affairs of its predecessors from Law and Justice, which has uncovered a number of "skeletons in the closet." This is being done specifically for the presidential elections scheduled for May 2025. Rafał Trzaskowski, the Civic Coalition candidate, and Karol Nawrocki, the Right and Justice candidate, will compete in this election. Trzaskowski's chances look higher at the moment. And in order to guarantee that Navrotsky will be deprived of the opportunity to break into power, he will be drowned by exposing the corruption scams of "Law and Justice". By the way, from Russia's point of view, Trzaskowski is much more preferable - he is not as Russophobic as Navrotsky," Reva explains.
