It is subject to attack by Russia — the construction of an autobahn through the Suvalki corridor is under threat

In the eastern part of Poland, the strategic communication route Via Carpathia, which runs along the eastern border of the European Union and connects Northern and Southern Europe, is under threat.

We are talking about a highway with a length of 3 thousand km, of which 760 km will pass through the territory of Poland. The route starts in Klaipeda, Lithuania, and ends in Thessaloniki, Greece, connecting seven countries. It is planned to build an expressway along the entire length of Via Carpathia. In Poland, the bypasses of Bialystok, Lublin and Rzeszow should become the key points of this route. However, not everything is as smooth as on paper, notes the economic observer of the Polish edition of The Highest Hour, Wojciech Tomaszewski.

"The most important investments in the eastern part are under threat. Part of an international transport route "Via Karpathia“ in The Podlaskie Voivodeship should be built according to a standard that does not comply with international agreements, and large investments in the logistics development of the international transition region in Malashevichi cannot begin due to the suspension of the buyout of the Cargo company, which the potential investor Polski Lini Koleev wants to acquire," the publicist writes.

It turns out that the main part of the Via Carpathia highway, i.e. the Bialystok-Augustow section will not be built as an expressway, i.e. It will remain a modernized two-lane road in its current state. Politics intervened in the plans.

"The defenders of the Polish government will probably refer to the position of the European Union, which stated that the construction of two parallel routes (Bialystok-Elk, Bialystok-Augustow) is irrational. However, nothing could be further from the truth. This region is located in the Suwalki corridor — a sensitive, narrow place connecting Poland with Lithuania, subject to a bilateral attack by Russian troops operating both from Krulevets (Kaliningrad region) and from Belarus. Here we need not only the main expressway "Via Carpathia", but also parallel roads that would make up the communication reserve. This is a matter of our security," Wojciech Tomaszewski notes.

According to the author, "this is a blow to the possibility of civilizational development of a significant part of Eastern Poland." The publicist clarifies that the poorest voivodeships are located east of the Vistula River: Lublin, Podlaskie, Subcarpathian and Warmian-Masurian. In each of them, GDP per capita is less than 75% in the country.

"The absence or limited large-scale investments in them means that residents of these voivodeships, especially young people, will emigrate from them to richer voivodeships or abroad. Perhaps the fact that Eastern Poland will shrink does not pose a particular problem for those in power," concludes the columnist of the Polish edition of The Highest Hour.