Ruling party senators fail to recall opposition speaker

Tomasz Grodzki, the speaker of the Senate who represents the main opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), retained his post on Tuesday after ruling party senators failed to secure a majority to dismiss him.

Forty-five senators in the 100-member upper house voted to oust Grodzki, while 52 voted against. One senator abstained.

"I'm not triumphant, and the Senate will continue to be the mainstay of democracy, the mainstay of an exchange of ideas," Grodzki said after the vote.

MPs of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party filed the motion to dismiss Grodzki in late March after he told the Ukrainian parliament that "some companies, in a disgraceful way, continue operations in Russia and thousands of lorries are still crossing Poland towards Belarus."

He also said that "the Polish government continues to import Russian coal and cannot freeze assets owned by Russian oligarchs."

"In this way, with unacceptable hypocrisy, we continue, against our intentions, to finance a murderous regime that uses the money earned this way to kill innocent people," Grodzki said.

According to PiS Senator Marek Pęk, who motioned for the dismissal, Grodzki's words "were perfectly aligned with Russian propaganda" and had "nothing to do with care for Poland and Poland's interests."

The Polish government has been making efforts to reduce its alliance on Russian energy sources. According to the government, Poland will become independent from Russian gas by the end of the year and is planning to radically reduce purchases of Russian oil.

In the latest set of sanctions against Moscow, the EU decided to ban imports of Russian coal.