Poland Increases Engagement with Baltic and Nordic Countries

Poland Increases Engagement with Baltic and Nordic Countries

Executive Summary:

• Poland has increased diplomatic engagement and security cooperation with the Baltic Sea basin since 2023 in response to an eroding regional security system and ongoing threats posed by Russia.
• On February 2, at the Oslo Security Conference, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland Radosław Sikorski stated that Poland wants to deepen strategic cooperation with Northern Europe as the Baltic Sea basin gains importance in Poland’s economic development and regional security. 
• Poland’s foreign policy focus on the Baltic and Nordic countries may mean less engagement with traditional anchors of Poland’s foreign policy, such as Central and Eastern Europe.

On February 2, at the Oslo Security Conference, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland Radosław Sikorski stated that Poland wants to deepen strategic cooperation with Northern Europe. Sikorski discussed challenges that Northern Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are facing amid Russia’s war against Ukraine (Government of Poland, February 2). This is just one of the recent steps Poland has taken in its engagement with Northern Europe.

Poland has not historically focused its foreign relations to the north despite its access to the Baltic Sea and its extensive coastline. Polish engagement with the Baltic and Nordic countries has been limited and has clearly ranked below other strategic directions, including eastern policy, Atlantic policy, and regional policy concentrated on Central and Eastern Europe (Nowak-Jeziorański, 2013; Kowal; Juchnowski, 2018). Marginalization of the northern/Baltic dimension was historically and culturally conditioned. For centuries, a land-based culture dominated Poland, and the Polish nobility despised maritime affairs, navigation, and merchants (Tazbir, 1977).

In the interwar period, an attempt was made to open Poland to the sea. Unfavorable geopolitical circumstances, including a narrow coastal strip where maritime infrastructure had to be built from scratch and the outbreak of World War II, halted this process. The marginalization of foreign relations with the North persisted during the Cold War and after Poland’s sovereignty was restored in 1991. Clear evidence of this policy after 1991 included structural neglect of the Navy and a significant reduction in its personnel and equipment. One leitmotif of the work of some faculty members of the Naval Academy in Gdynia was the need to emphasize that Poland is not merely a state with access to the sea, but a maritime state. For a long time, this did not fit the political psyche of decision-making centers in Warsaw.

Changes in this approach only began to show in the 2010s. In 2006, Poland decided to build a liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal in Świnoujście, and construction began in 2011 (Puls Biznesu, January 3, 2006). In 2008, Poland entered a political cooperation with Sweden, initiating the Eastern Partnership, which they officially inaugurated in 2009 at the Prague summit. In 2017, the governments of Poland and Norway agreed to build the Baltic Pipe, a natural gas pipeline linking the Norwegian shelf to Poland via Denmark (Energianews, February 10, 2017). In 2022, Poland finished construction on the Vistula Spit Canal, which provides Warsaw with direct sea access from the Vistula Lagoon to the Baltic Sea, bypassing the Russian-controlled waters of Kaliningrad.

The biggest push toward Poland’s northern engagement took place in late 2023. This shift was driven by domestic factors—the change in power after Poland’s parliamentary elections in October 2023—and international factors. In his April 2024 speech at the Sejm, the lower house of Poland’s bicameral parliament, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski unequivocally emphasized the importance of the Baltic Sea basin and cooperation with Nordic and Baltic countries as a priority of the new government’s foreign policy (Government of Poland, April 25, 2024). Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk similarly pointed to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Finland, and Norway as priorities for regional cooperation in his December 2023 speech to the Sejm (Government of Poland, December 13, 2023). These were the only allied states, apart from the United States, mentioned in his nearly two-hour speech.

Concrete government initiatives soon followed these speeches. Since November 2024, when Sweden invited Tusk to the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) summit, Poland has regularly participated in selected NB8 meetings (Instytut Europy Środkowej, December 19, 2024). Poland’s Ministry of Defense also conducts multilateral cooperation. In October 2025, the NB8 states and Poland signed an agreement to establish a Nordic-Baltic training center in Poland for unmanned systems operators and support for Ukraine (Government of Poland, October 15, 2025). Poland is also developing bilateral cooperation with regional partners, exemplified by a 2024 strategic partnership agreement with Sweden and a 2025 Memorandum of Understanding on defense cooperation with Norway (Instytut Europy Środkowej, December 19, 2024; Government of Poland, September 29, 2025).

NB8 states and Poland participate in NATO joint operations, including Eastern Sentry, Baltic Sentry, and regional drills (Instytut Europy Środkowej, January 21, September 17, 2025). Military cooperation also takes place through the tactical maritime headquarters Commander Task Force Baltic, based in Rostock, Germany. In November 2025, the Polish Navy chose the Swedish Saab Kockums shipyard as the preferred manufacturer for three submarines, underscoring the growing importance of the Nordic states to the Polish military (Defense24.pl, December 5, 2025). The contract is estimated at approximately 10 billion Polish zloty ($2.8 billion). Poland is also shifting its symbolic posture toward its maritime presence. In 2025, the Polish Ministry of Defense organized the first naval parade in Warsaw, alongside the traditional air force and army parades on Polish Armed Forces Day (President of Poland, August 15, 2025.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its increased hybrid warfare in Europe compelled Poland to seek regional partners to the north. Increasing Russian pressure, provocation, and sabotage activities through military and civilian means, as well as the weaponization of migration, mean that traditionally understood security remains a priority of Polish foreign policy (see EDM, May 8, May 29, September 15, 2025, January 15). Limited trust toward Western European partners and Washington’s desire to Europeanize the regional security system have led Poland to deepen its Nordic and Baltic partnership. The accession of Finland in 2023 and Sweden in 2024 to NATO was a true game-changer (see EDM, April 22, 2024). From the Polish perspective, the Nordic states share a perception of the Russian threat, a determination to counter and deter Moscow, and strong military-industrial capabilities. [1] Shared defense priorities, together with participation in collective military activities, significantly enhance Poland’s view of the Nordic allies’ credibility.

Close cooperation between the Nordic and Baltic states is also important. Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia are particularly exposed to Russian hostile actions due to their size, location, and limited militaries (see EDM, February 5, June 28, June 3, September 4, 2025, January 16). NATO directly links Baltic and Polish security, meaning allied disloyalty toward them would lead to the collapse of NATO guarantees as a whole and, thus, the failure of Poland’s core security pillar.

Russian sabotage activity in the Baltic Sea basin has also pushed Poland toward its northern allies. These activities include Russian airspace violations and attempts to change maritime borders unilaterally. Moscow has used its  “shadow fleet” to damage critical infrastructure such as undersea energy cables for intelligence operations, among other hostile actions (see EDM, February 5, 2025, January 16). From Warsaw’s perspective, cooperation with partners in the Baltic Sea basin is essential given the risk of further Russian escalation, including potential environmental disasters or sabotage of transmission infrastructure. Countering Russian provocations and mitigating their consequences requires a collective regional effort, given the potential scale of the damage and limited individual national resources.

Poland is also driven north by the growing importance of the Baltic Sea for the country’s economic development. The Baltic Sea is already the source of almost all of Poland’s energy resource imports, including gas via the Świnoujście LNG terminal and Baltic Pipe, oil via the Gdańsk oil terminal, and coal primarily from Gdańsk, Gdynia, and the Szczecin-Świnoujście complex. International trade statistics also evidence the growing importance of the Baltic dimension of Polish policy. Since 2009, the tonnage of goods Poland imported and exported by sea has tripled, an exceptional case within the European Union (Eurostat, accessed January 28). Poland’s Port of Gdańsk, which ranked only 24th among EU ports in 2014, reached fifth place in 2023 (Eurostat, accessed January 28). The Baltic Sea is also crucial for Poland due to other critical infrastructure located there, including telecommunications cables connecting Poland with Denmark, Germany, and Sweden via Bornholm, SwePol link’s high-voltage submarine cables, and Baltic Power’s offshore wind farms and drilling platforms. Securing this infrastructure is one of the main objectives and determinants of Poland’s northern-oriented defense policy.

Maritime transport of allied armaments to NATO’s eastern flank through Poland’s Baltic ports has gained importance following Finland and Sweden’s accession. This route is faster than the alternative of using German ports and rail infrastructure and has become easier to secure since Finland and Sweden joined NATO. It would be prudent to train and exercise along this route, using it and protecting it through military maneuvers. Poland’s greater focus on northern foreign policy after 2023 is primarily driven by the need to stabilize the regional security system and build resilience against Russian threats. The economic dimension of Poland’s Nordic and Baltic engagement is also important. Nonetheless, with Russia’s looming threat, the economic dimension is also strongly securitized.

Maintaining previously developed forms of cooperation is a key challenge. Following its robust support for Ukraine during Russia’s war and large-scale investments in its armed forces, Poland began to be perceived as a regional leader (see EDM, February 25, 2022). This coincided with Poland’s political investment in regional formats such as the Bucharest Nine or the Three Seas Initiative. Already, growing engagement with Nordic and Baltic partners has led to the deprioritization of other directions—for example, the lack of consultation with Czechia or Romania prior to the mini-summit of European leaders in Paris in February 2025, or the absence of high-level government representatives at the Three Seas Summit in Warsaw in April 2025 (Instytut Europy Środkowej, February 21, 2025).

It is difficult to avoid the impression that priority is given to relations with Nordic states, while the Baltic states are treated somewhat as junior partners. This is evidenced, for instance, by reduced political engagement toward Lithuania in recent months. The Polish government’s decision to reduce 2026 funding for TVP Wilno—the branch of Polish public television directed at Poles in Lithuania, which is crucial in countering Russian disinformation within this community—is just one example (Instytut Europy Środkowej, December 18, 2025). Moreover, Poland did not coordinate the reopening of its border with Belarus with Lithuania, leaving Vilnius isolated in dealing with hybrid pressure from Belarus. While reopening the border reduced pressure on Poland from artificial migration, Lithuania continued to face airspace violations by Belarusian meteorological balloons.

Poland’s cooperation in the northern direction ultimately does not stem from a short-term political need, such as the government in Warsaw seeking to distance itself from the other Visegrad states—Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia—whose policies toward Russia remain ambiguous. Rather, it is a strategic necessity and will be sustained in the coming years.

[1] Poland has begun a similar attempt in the south-eastern direction by initiating a new rapprochement with Türkiye (Government of Poland, December 15, 2025). The first attempt ended in failure (see EDM, July 6, 2021).