The dorzeczy.pl website said the protestors had “boasted” about their opposition to the project in the pro-Russian Sputnik website.
Sputnik, which has been criticised in Poland as a Kremlin mouthpiece, reported that activists have collected over 16,000 signatures in a petition against the canal project, according to dorzeczy.pl.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently visited the site of the project, dorzeczy.pl noted.
Speaking at the site of the planned new waterway in the north of the country, Duda said on Saturday that the project “will help strengthen Poland’s sovereignty and enhance its independence and freedom.”
“We will no longer have to ask the Russians … but will have our own waterway,” he added.
Duda told reporters that Poland was determined to push ahead with large infrastructure projects such as the new canal as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Polish government in October inked a huge deal with a consortium of private firms to dig the strategic canal between the Vistula Lagoon and the Bay of Gdańsk, a project hailed by supporters as a boon to the nation’s sovereignty.
Under the deal, a Polish-Belgian consortium is expected to build the new waterway for PLN 992 million (EUR 230 million, USD 252 million) by 2022.
The new canal between the Vistula Lagoon and the Bay of Gdańsk will be around 1.3 kilometres long and five metres deep, officials have said.
It will be built by digging through the Vistula Spit, a narrow strip of land that separates the bay from the lagoon on Polish territory.
The aim is to allow deep-draft vessels to enter Poland’s Elbląg seaport without passing through the Strait of Baltiysk in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave.
The plan to build the canal requires the construction of new water routes, an artificial island and civil engineering and road infrastructure.
Officials have estimated the total cost of the project at almost PLN 2 billion.
Poland’s conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński said in October 2018 that the planned new canal near the Russian border would help enhance his country’s military as well as economic sovereignty.
Kaczyński, who heads Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, said in September 2018 that the plan to build the canal showed that Russia, Poland’s former communist-era overlord, could no longer dictate to Warsaw what to do.
Source: dorzeczy.pl