'Burn everything': Poland chokes on the smog of war

Smoke billowing from a house in Rybnik, Poland. Photos: Kuba Stezycki/Reuters

The Tkaczuk family moved from the Polish city of Krakow to the village of Olpiny in the Carpathian foothills in 2018 in search of cleaner country air.

Four years on, as the fallout from the Ukraine war halted Russian gas supplies to Poland, the local authorities postponed a ban on the dirtiest stoves for heating, and air pollution in Olpiny exceeded the norms by four-fold last month.