Poland opens a propaganda-heavy canal

cool Baltic waves once lapped a remote forested sandbank, the Vistula Spit, Poland’s government has created a megaproject to outwit Russia. “This is the last place in Poland which was constantly subject to interference,” said Marek Grobarczyk, the deputy infrastructure minister. With pomp and pageantry, this weekend the government will unveil a canal linking the Vistula Lagoon, a shallow 90km-long reservoir in north-eastern Poland, to the Baltic Sea. The 1.3km artificial waterway will allow ships to bypass a Russian-controlled strait, which has on occasion been shut off.The government has shrugged off environmental and economic misgivings over its investment of more than two billion zlotys ($420m) by depicting the canal as a matter of national security. The rest of a new, deeper, waterway to the port of Elblag, 20km to the south, has not been finished. But officials have rushed forward the canal’s opening to September 17th, the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. “On this symbolic day, we will break Russia’s domination in the region,” boasted Mr Grobarczyk, who is overseeing the project.