Energy Security, Strategic Autonomy and Foreign Policy Resilience: Germany and Poland after Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 transformed European energy policy from a largely economic and regulatory field into a central question of security, diplomacy, and strategic autonomy. This article examines how pre-war energy dependence and post-war diversification shaped foreign-policy resilience in Germany and Poland between 2021 and 2025. The two countries provide a revealing comparison because Germany entered the crisis with deep reliance on Russian pipeline gas, while Poland had spent years treating dependence on Russia as a security vulnerability and investing in alternative infrastructure. The study adopts a qualitative comparative case-study design based on structured document analysis of official European Union, German, and Polish energy statistics, policy documents, regulatory reports, and peer-reviewed scholarship. The findings show that the 2022 shock exposed the foreign-policy costs of concentrated energy dependence but also demonstrated that vulnerability can be reduced rapidly when national adaptation is reinforced by regional market integration. Germany moved from 52% of gas imports originating in Russia in 2021 to a system centred on Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and liquefied natural gas, while maintaining gas consumption well below its 2018–2021 average through 2025. Poland’s earlier development of the Świnoujście LNG terminal, regional interconnectors, and the Baltic Pipe reduced the adjustment burden when Russian pipeline deliveries ceased in 2022. The comparison indicates that Poland possessed greater pre-crisis resilience, whereas Germany developed substantial resilience through accelerated diversification, demand reduction, storage policy, and European solidarity. The article concludes that strategic autonomy in energy does not require national self-sufficiency; rather, it depends on diversified supply, flexible infrastructure, credible regional institutions, and the political capacity to absorb short-term economic costs without abandoning foreign-policy commitments. It recommends that European governments treat diversification, clean-energy transition, storage, and cross-border connectivity as mutually reinforcing instruments of diplomacy and security rather than as separate energy-policy objectives.

Keywords: Energy Security, Strategic Autonomy, Foreign Policy Resilience, Germany, Poland