Poland’s largest leader PKO BP looks for M&A opportunities

​15 miles from Poland

A Russian missile attack that killed at least 35 people in western Ukraine, some 15 miles from NATO member Poland, has stirred anxiety and spurred Poles to rush to passport offices and stockpile essentials amid fears the war could cut off supplies, or even spill over into Poland.

​Worries for the future

A long line of applicants, unseen for decades, formed Monday outside Warsaw’s main passport office on Krucza Street. Canned food, bottled water, flashlights and batteries filled shoppers’ baskets. People in the street talked of the latest news and their worries for the future.

In the street, outside the passport office, Justyna Winnicka, 44, was filling out the passport form for her 16-year-old daughter, Michalina.

​”Afraid”

“We want to have a passport because the last one expired and we want to be able to go on vacation, but also want to be able to travel abroad in case something happens here in Poland,” Winnicka told The Associated Press.

Asked if she was afraid because of the fighting just across Poland’s border, she said “Everybody is a little bit afraid today.”

​”NATO will protect”

“We all believe that the fact that we are in NATO will protect us in some way, but each of us also remembers the history of World War II and the (failed) alliances of those times,” Winnicka said.

“Things can turn out in different ways. In Poland people are a bit afraid,” she said.

​Poland’s safety

All this despite the fact that NATO, to which former Eastern bloc nation Poland has belonged since 1999, is strengthening its military presence in eastern Poland, close to the Ukraine border, and stresses that the alliance is fulfilling its task of ensuring Poland’s safety.