Polish government decides to curb ties with Russia

The Polish cabinet has adopted a package of bills that will scale down Warsaw's relations with Moscow owing to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government spokesman has said.

Piotr Mueller said on Tuesday that the government had taken further steps so that "we can expand the measures that we have already taken at the EU sanctions level, to the domestic level."

The government approved a bill that enables the freezing of assets of entities that support Russia. "This bill assumes that we will block assets owned by entities that support Russia's invasion of independent Ukraine," Mueller said.

The Polish list of such entities, to be run by the interior minister, and goes further than the EU sanctions already imposed on Russia, according to the government spokesman.

In the next move, Poland is going to send a diplomatic note to Russia informing it of withdrawal from an agreement on the support and mutual protection of investments, Mueller said.

The spokesman explained that although the 1992 deal had never entered into force, "the Russian side could finalise the regulations at any moment."

"We can see certain threats in such a possibility," the spokesman said, adding that the deal itself was archaic and not compatible with current treaty practice, especially since Poland became an EU member.

Finally, the government has decided to move for a total ban on Russian coal.

"We realise that it may create legal doubts, unfortunately reasonable doubts, but we can't keep on waiting for an EU reaction in this respect," Mueller said.

Poland imports significant amounts of hard coal from Russia despite being a major coal producer itself, mainly due to the fact that Russian coal is better suited for power generation and is cheaper.

The United States, the European Union and a range of other Western allies have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia over the war it has waged against Ukraine.