On Earth Day 2022 Greenpeace Poland put together two movements: anti-war and anti-climate change. During the ‘Stop Financing War’ protests throughout the biggest cities in the country, protesters exhorted the government to put an embargo on Russian fossil fuels.
Greenpeace is an independent non-government organisation that campaigns for climate change, deforestation, overfishing, and anti-nuclear issues. It works in 55 countries in different parts of the world, including Poland. Since the beginning of Russian aggression on Ukraine, they campaign for EU leaders to stop importing gas, oil and coal from Russia. Greenpeace has estimated that countries in the European Union pass around 900 million Euro over to Russia every day. Besides the fact that it finances their contemptible war crimes, the excessive use of fossil fuels is a threat to the environment.
The manifestation started at 6 P.M. at the German Embassy. Then it marched next to the Parliament of the Republic of Poland, de Gaulle rondo, and ended at the Defilade Square. The protesters were shouting “Embargo!” and held posters with signs “Stop the war”, “Be brave like Ukraine”, “Stop financing war” and “Fossil fuels finance the war”. The protesters were also given sunflowers, a national flower of Ukraine, exported on a mass scale. In the end, they sang “Oh, the Red Viburnum”, a Ukrainian patriotic march written in 1914 by Stephan Charnetsky.
The protest was organized by Greenpeace, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Union of Ukrainians in Poland. Besides Warsaw, the protests took place also in Opole and Lublin.