‘Gas was like our drug’: defiant Poland vows to wean itself off Russian energy
Headteacher Natalia Pałczyńskawas in a state of shock after the heating and hot water at her primary school went off without warning on Wednesday. “We were completely taken aback,” she said. Unless the gas starts flowing again soon, she said, “we’ll have no choice but to close our doors until it does”.
The school, in Mieścisko, a village in western Poland, was in one of about 10 administrative districts in which homes, health centres, kindergartens and local businesses – as well as thousands of residents – lost heating after Moscow halted gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria at 8am on Wednesday. The affected area was relatively small, and unusual in that it was solely dependent on Russia for gas. But it was seen as an indication as to what could happen on a wider scale if Moscow turned off supplies to countries far more dependent than Poland which, while it gets 40% of its gas needs from Russia, only uses gas for 9% of its energy requirements.
Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister, complained of a “direct attack”, accusing Russia of “putting a pistol to our heads”, but said Poland would “manage so that the Polish people will not feel any change”, and urging Poles in a televised address: “please don’t be afraid”.
But in Mieścisko at least, the fear was palpable. The phones of the mayor’s office were ringing constantly as residents called in to say they had been, as one local woman told Polish TV, “shut down by Putin”.
The Kremlin said it had halted supplies because of Warsaw and Sofia’s failure to respond to its demand to pay for gas in roubles. The two EU members, which are among the most vocal supporters of a swift withdrawal from Russian gas, said they would not give in to blackmail and that the provocative step was one
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