State-owned Polish gas company PGNiG has confirmed the purchase of a large shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, which it will transfer on to Ukraine.
“Thanks to investments in gas infrastructure… we can strengthen the energy security of the region by ensuring access to various sources of natural gas for our customers,” said Paweł Majewski, the chief executive officer at PGNiG, of the move, in remarks reported by Radio Poland.
“Poland, thanks to the Baltic Pipe or the LNG terminal etc., has real possibilities to break the Russian energy domination in Central Europe,” commented Stanisław Żaryn, Director of the National Security Department at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki.
“At critical moments, this has an impact on the level of security in Europe,” he added.
Poland’s acquisition of the LNG, which will be re-gassified in the Slavic country before being transferred to Ukraine via the Polish transmission system, comes amid a major gas price inflation in Europe, which has been blamed on a Russian supply squeeze — although Russian president Vladimir Putin has alleged the true culprit is Germany.
The Polish government’s approach to the Ukraine situation and Russian influence on gas prices differs markedly from that of their key ally in the region, Hungary, which is also led by a national conservative government.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who recently held a summit with President Putin which he described as a “peace mission”, has emphasised that, in his view, sanctions on the Russian Federation are “doomed to failure”, and has as a practical matter sought to increase his landlocked country’s share of Russian gas supply.
This approach has had some benefits for the Hungarians, who have largely escaped the massive home electricity and heating bill rises sweeping the rest of the European Union.
Notably, the Hungarians have been in dispute with the Ukrainians in recent years over the mistreatment of the Hungarian minority in the country.
Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party (PiS), is meanwhile believed to bear something of a grudge against Russia, suspecting that its government either caused or covered up the cause of the Smolensk air disaster of 2010, which saw his twin brother Lech — then President of Poland — killed in an aeroplane crash while on his way to a memorial service for Poles murdered by Soviet Communists at Katyn in 1940.