The school, in Mieśisku, a village in western Poland, was located in one of about 10 administrative districts in which homes, health centers, kindergartens and local businesses – as well as thousands of residents – lost their heating after Moscow cut off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. at 8 a.m. Wednesday. The affected area was relatively small and unusual in that it depended exclusively on Russia for gas. But it was seen as an indication of what could happen on a larger scale if Moscow cut off supplies to countries much more dependent on Poland, which, while supplying 40% of its gas needs from Russia, uses only gas. for 9% of energy requirements. Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister, complained of an “immediate attack”, accusing Russia of “putting a gun to our head” but saying Poland “would do it so that the Polish people would not feel any change” and urged Poles to TV talk: “Do not be afraid.” But at least in Mieśisku, the fear was felt. The mayor’s office telephones were ringing constantly as residents called to say they had been shut down, as a local on Polish television said, “Putin hung up.” The Kremlin said it had cut off supplies due to the failure of Warsaw and Sofia to comply with their request to pay for gas in rubles. The two EU members, who are among the most ardent supporters of a speedy withdrawal from Russian gas, said they would not give in to blackmail and that the provocative step was what they could take. But it has pushed Europe to the brink of an energy crisis, causing a 20% rise in the already rising wholesale price of gas. There are concerns that Russia could do the same elsewhere as Gazprom’s most important customer in Europe, Germany – which gets 55% of its gas from Russia and has paid € 5 billion for gas and oil. since the start of the conflict in Ukraine – or in others, such as Italy, Finland, Croatia or Latvia, which also depend heavily on Moscow. Industry in Poland has a brave face. “We are well prepared for this,” said Tomasz Zieliński, chairman of the board of the Polish Chamber of Chemical Industry, which represents about 13,000 companies and more than 320,000 jobs. In his office in central Warsaw, he cited the fact that Poland’s gas storage facilities were 76% full, compared to the EU average of only 30% (33% in Germany). The government had spent years working with companies to reduce their dependence on Russia, he said. Russia’s gas supplies to Europe In 2015, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal was opened in the northwestern port city of Świnoujście, near the German border, capable of meeting a quarter of Poland’s gas needs. Expands to increase intake by about 10%. Snapshots of his yellow, snake-shaped pipes often set the stage for recent television reports and government interviews in an attempt to reassure Poles. It has become something of a symbol of the nation’s hope in the bezpieczeństwo energetyczne (energy security), the new phrase buzz. This fall, the much-praised Baltic pipeline, seen as a response to the German-Russian project Nord Steam 2, is scheduled to be operational. Going from Norway via Denmark to Poland, it will be able to transport about 10 billion cubic meters of gas each year, about half of its national needs. Another pipeline nearing completion will connect Poland with the LNG terminal in the Lithuanian port city of Klaipeda, and existing pipelines connect Poland with Germany and the Czech Republic. “Poland was not surprised by what happened, it was something that was always expected,” said Joanna Maćkowiak-Pandera, head of Forum Energii, an NGO covering business, administration and science that focuses on the energy transition. He hoped it could speed up Poland’s slow efforts to get rid of carbon emissions, he said, because “it is now clear to most people that fossil fuel sales have literally fueled Russian aggression.” The image projected by business and politics may be an image of Stoicism and helped unify a polarized country, but “the atmosphere is extremely nervous,” he said. Requests for interviews with 12 gas-dependent manufacturers, from glassmakers to cardboard manufacturers, were rejected, with one acknowledging that “the issue is too delicate at the moment” to speak. The government has downgraded Poland’s dependence on Russian coal, said Maćkowiak-Pandera, who supplements inadequate domestic supplies and is used to heat a large proportion of Polish homes. “People have only recently realized that it is Russian coal that is giving us our dirty air and there is a lot of pressure to stop it,” he said. “In a way, this is more important to us than the issue of gas.” He asked if the national effort for derusyfikacja (de-Russification) would remove the issue of dekarbonizacja (carbonization) on the agenda, further increasing the demand for coal or – as he hoped – would help oust Poland. Support for the phasing out of Russian coal is high – 94% of citizens in a recent poll said they were willing to pay more to change than Russian supplies. “But no one says how much they would be willing to pay,” he said. Household carbon prices have already risen by 300% in the past year. “So, as a result, we expect to see a lot of energy poverty next winter.” There are speculations that the frantic attempt to meet growing coal demand may have caused two deadly explosions last week at mines in Silesia, southern Poland, killing 18 miners, while seven others are still missing. Bernard Swolzyna, electrical engineer at the progressive thinktank Instrat, said that while he could not help but be shocked by the events that led to it, “a dramatic change in the window of speech is taking place in Poland right now.” The idea of ​​”diverting fossil fuels from Russia was until recently a marginal idea, and is now considered a key scenario,” he said. Poland has spent years telling its neighbors Europe to move away from Russian supplies. The word niepodleglosc (independence) has a deep emotional meaning associated with Poland’s past under the yoke of foreign powers, most recently the Soviet Union. It is often used today in connection with the energy debate. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST History has shown that trust in Russia has been low from the beginning, but everyday experience has not helped. In the last 18 years, Russian gas has stopped flowing at least seven times, sometimes for a few days, once for half a year. “We were willing to be independent, which we were sometimes accused of being Russophobic, especially by German politicians. “But this idea never flew into the financial markets, because the low price was the driving force,” said Maćkowiak-Pandera. Pavel Rozinski, a financial commentator for the conservative newspaper Rzeczpospolita, said Russia was “like Pablo Escobar”. “Gas was like our drug and it turned out to be very addictive because it was cheap, efficient and more environmentally friendly than other energy sources. “Poland was forced to revolt very quickly; but we lost a lot of time defending coal because we thought it was protecting our sovereignty; and one of the side effects would be much higher energy costs.” For Wojciech Mróz, the cut is more ethically and ethically significant. The 24-year-old territorial economics student, who has his own start-up payments, Pagaspot, is at the forefront of efforts through a universal youth organization to help some of the three million Ukrainian refugees who, according to border police, have arrived. in Poland since the start of the war. About 20,000-25,000 people are still arriving daily and the numbers are not expected to stop any time soon. “It’s good that it happened now, as it saves our government from having to take this step itself. “And even if the war did not end, if we had continued to get gas, it would not be well next to Poland’s huge national effort to help Ukrainian refugees and save lives.” Maks De Doliwa Zieliński, 23, an economics student from Krakow whose recent plans to work for a German chemical company in eastern Ukraine were shattered by the war, said the situation was causing friction at home. “My father, a businessman, said that we and Europe made a mistake, we do not trust Russia at all. We should never have it. ” His German mother, he said, believes otherwise, arguing that Germany had nurtured the naive hope of helping Russia move to democracy through its close trade ties (the Wandel durch Handel policy – or “change through trade”). “Poland has been screaming at the Germans for a long time about the need for differentiation, saying that Russia was very unpredictable. “But as we can see now, business has led politics into a dark corner.”