Russia has announced the closure of Poland’s consulate in Saint Petersburg and expelled three diplomats working there in retaliation for Poland’s closure of the Russian consulate in Poznań in October.
In a statement on December 5, the Russian foreign ministry asaid it had delivered a formal diplomatic note to the Polish authorities informing them of the decision to withdraw consent for the operation of the consulate from January 10 next year. It ordered three employees there to leave Russia by the same date.
The move marked another example of deteriorating relations between the two nations after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Poland’s support for the Ukrainians.
“In recent years, the Polish authorities have been pursuing an openly hostile policy towards Russia, have almost completely dismantled the architecture of Russian-Polish relations built over many decades, and openly declare the need to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on our country,” the Russian foreign ministry stated in announcing the measure it had taken against Poland. .
“One of the examples of this anti-Russian course was the closure of the Russian consulate general in Poznań under a far-fetched pretext,” the ministry claimed.
Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski responded by saying that Russia was in the wrong over its move. He claimed in an interview on Polish Government-funded English language television channel TVP World that the closure of the consulate in Poznań was a “response to Russia’s acts of sabotage, of arson in Poland, which is completely unacceptable. These were hostile, criminal acts”.
Sikorski added that the Polish decision was meant as a warning. “We know what you are doing, we have proof that you’re doing it. Stop doing it, and if you don’t, we’ll take further action.”
Poland closed the Russian consulate and expelled diplomats working there in response to alleged actions by the Russians that Warsaw viewed as “hybrid warfare.” These included incidents of arson, cyber attacks against Polish institutions and Russia’s issuing of visas to individuals attempting to illegally cross the Polish-Belarus border.
Russia’s foreign ministry responded to the closure of the consulate at the time by warning that Warsaw’s “hostile step will be met with a painful response”.
On December 5, Sikorski walked out of a session of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Malta during a speech by Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, accusing the Russian minister of coming to the meeting to “lie about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
He also told TVP World that Russia should be suspended from both the OSCE and the UN Security Council until the end of the Ukraine war.
