Russia to close Polish consulate that looks after memorials
World
Russia to close Polish consulate that looks after memorials
MOSCOW/WARSAW (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday it will shut a Polish diplomatic mission looking after memorials to Polish officers massacred by the Soviets and a 2010 air crash that killed Poland's president, in retaliation for Warsaw's "aggressive line" towards Moscow.
The war in Ukraine has brought tense relations between Warsaw and Moscow to new lows. Poland accuses Russia of trying to destabilise the country with disinformation campaigns and espionage. Moscow has condemned what it sees as Warsaw's hostile stance towards it.
The Russian foreign ministry said that the Polish ambassador had been summoned and informed of the decision to close Poland's "consular agency" in the western Russian city of Smolensk.
The Polish diplomatic mission looks after two memorials - a cemetery for victims of the Soviet Union's mass execution of thousands of Polish officers during World War Two, as well as the site of a 2010 air disaster that killed Polish officials travelling to commemorate those massacres.
"Warsaw has been pursuing a hostile policy towards Russia in recent years," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "The atmosphere of unbridled Russophobia... prevailing in Poland precludes the demonstration of any 'goodwill gestures' on our part."
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland would give an equal response if Russia closed down its diplomatic missions.
"We regularly receive information about aggressive diplomatic actions from Russia," Mateusz Morawiecki told a press conference. "If in the end it comes to it that Russia starts to liquidate our offices we will respond in kind."
Moscow has been enraged by Poland's decision to pull down monuments to Red Army soldiers who died during World War Two.
Additionally in May Russia summoned Poland's chargé d'affaires to protest against what it called the "seizure" of its embassy school building in Warsaw.
Poland says Russia was occupying Polish state property; Russia called the seizure illegal.
The consulate in Smolensk takes care of the cemetary where some victims are buried of the Katyn massacres, when the Soviet Union, which had jointly invaded Poland with Nazi Germany, executed around 22,000 Polish officers who were prisoners of war.
In 2010, President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people including top politicians and military officers were killed when their plane crashed in thick fog in Smolensk as they travelled to mark the anniversary of the Katyn killings.
