On Saturday, Poland opened a new canal that cuts across the Vistula Spit, the 83rd anniversary of the Soviet invasion of the country during WWII, in a show of newly acquired navigation independence from Russia.
The new waterway will take ships sailing across the Vistula Lagoon from the port of Elblag to the Baltic Sea. They had to sail round the spit through the Strait of Baltiysk in waters belonging to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave.
The Polish president Andrzej Duda opened the canal on Saturday afternoon.
The president said that the investment was opened. A great victory for Poland, a great victory for patriots, and a great victory for those who understand sovereignty and the significance of sovereignty. Praising the new canal, Duda said that the waterway will allow for free navigation between the Baltic Sea, the Gdansk Bay and the Vistula Lagoon, and the towns of PAP Elblag and Tolkmicko. Today, on the 83rd anniversary of the Soviet Union's attack on Poland, in a symbolic way we are breaking the last ties of our factual. He added that the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union are dependent on each other.
Russia opposes the canal, because it believes that it will allow Nato warships to enter the Vistula Lagoon without passing close to Russian military facilities in Baltiysk, and therefore it poses a direct threat to the security of Kaliningrad and the Russian Federation as a whole.
On September 17th, 1939, sixteen days after Nazi Germany started World War Two by attacking Poland, Soviet troops invaded the country after a secret agreement with the German Third Reich that called for dividing Poland's territory between the two totalitarian states.