Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Monday he was ordering the closure of Russia’s consulate in the southern city of Krakow after evidence showed that Russia had committed an arson attack in the capital, Warsaw, last year in which a shopping center was almost completely destroyed.
The Russian ambassador was also summoned to the Foreign Ministry over the incident.
The move means that Russia now has only one consulate remaining in Poland, in the city of Gdansk, after the consulate in Poznan was closed in response to other acts of sabotage suspected to have been sponsored by Moscow.
It comes as European countries increasingly blame Russia for acts of sabotage as instruments of hybrid warfare alongside the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Warsaw and Moscow, which have always had tense relations, have been even more at loggerheads since Russia’s invasion.
What did Poland and Russia say?
In a statement published in Warsaw exactly one year after the fire in Warsaw, Sikorski said he was ordering the closure of the consulate within 30 days.
During a visit to Britain later in the day, he told reporters that the consulate was being closed because Polish authorities had found evidence of Russian involvement in the incident.
“This was a huge fire of a shopping mall in Warsaw in which, just by sheer luck, nobody was hurt. This is completely unacceptable,” Sikorski said.
“So the Russian Consulate will have to leave,” he added. “And if these attacks continue, we’ll take further action.”
Sikorski’s announcement came after Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Polish authorities “now know for certain that the massive fire on Marywilska was the result of arson commissioned by Russian services.”
“The actions were coordinated by a person residing in Russia. Some of the perpetrators are already in custody, while the rest have been identified and are being sought,” Tusk said on X, formerly Twitter. “We will catch them all!”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said there would be an “adequate response” to the consulate’s closure.
“Warsaw is continuing to deliberately destroy relations (between Poland and Russia) and acting against the interests of its citizens,” ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in comments quoted by Russian news agency Interfax.
What happened in the Warsaw attack?
On May 12, 2024, a fire broke out in the Marywilska 44 shopping center in a northern district of Warsaw.
The shopping center housed some 1,400 shops and service points, many operated by vendors from Vietnam.
No one was hurt in the fire.
Lithuania in March accused Russia of carrying out an arson attack last year at an IKEA in Vilnius, the capital.
That attack came just three days before the shopping center fire in neighboring Poland.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
