Poland calls for EU to stop all Russian crude oil imports by end of 2026

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Poland has called on the European Union to stop all Russian crude oil imports by the end of 2026 in order to “cease financing Russia’s war machine”.

Its appeal – set out in a letter by Poland’s energy minister, Miłosz Motyka, sent to all his EU counterparts – comes after US President Donald Trump also recently demanded that EU and NATO countries stop buying Russian in order to help pressure Moscow into ending its war in Ukraine.

“Now is the time for joint, ambitious action by the entire union,” wrote Motyka on social media Wednesday.

“I urge the adoption of a common objective: the complete cessation of imports of Russian crude oil by the end of 2026,” Motyka wrote in the letter, explaining that such a commitment would “demonstrate our resolve to achieve independence from oil supplies burdened with political and strategic risks”.

The energy minister suggested that Poland’s own success in disengaging from Russian fossil fuels “should serve as a model of pro-European policy” aimed at “curbing support for Russia in its pursuit of aggressive expansion and continued provocation”.

Motyka also said that last week’s incursion into Polish airspace by Russian drones made it particularly pertinent to “call for decisive action to cease financing Russia’s war machine and to end the import of Russian oil”.

The minister’s letter came a day after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that, following a call with Trump, “the European Commission will propose speeding up the phase-out of Russian fossil imports”.

Last week, Trump said that he believed Russia’s war against Ukraine would end if all NATO countries stopped purchasing Russian oil and put tariffs of 50% to 100% on China for its purchases of Russian oil.

This week, the US president reiterated that he wants EU and NATO members to “immediately stop” buying Russian oil. “[Its] not fair to us. They’re purchasing Russian oil, and we have to do things,” he said.

Landlocked Hungary and Slovakia are the only two EU member states that continue to import Russian oil and gas through the Druzhba oil pipeline. Under a proposal put forward by the European Commission in June, the EU is planning to phase out the import of Russian fossil fuels by the end of 2027.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Poland’s government and state-owned energy companies moved to end entirely the import of Russian coal, gas and oil.

By March 2023, state energy giant Orlen was supplying its refineries in Poland and neighbouring Lithuania with crude oil sourced entirely from non-Russian sources.

In June this year, Orlen declared that it had “freed the region from Russian crude oil” after ending its last contract for supplies from Russia to one of its refineries in the Czech Republic.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Herzi Pinki/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Agnieszka Wądołowska

Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. She is a member of the European Press Prize’s preparatory committee. She was 2022 Fellow at the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at City University of New York. In 2024, she graduated from the Advanced Leadership Programme for Top Talents at the Center for Leadership. She has previously contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy and Duży Format.