Poland Shuts Russian Consulate in Krakow Over 2024 Mall Arson
Poland has said it will shut down the Russian Consulate in Krakow on Monday after finding evidence that the country was behind a fire that ripped through a Warsaw shopping mall last year.
The NATO member state's foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, announced the move on May 12, a year to the day after the Marywilska 44 blaze broke out.
'Due to evidence that the Russian special services committed a reprehensible act of sabotage against the shopping centre on Marywilska Street, I have decided to withdraw my consent to the operation of the Consulate of the Russian Federation in Krakow,' Sikorski
He later discussed the move at a meeting of foreign ministers in London, saying Polish security forces had found evidence that agents acting for Moscow had committed arson.
'This was a huge fire of a shopping mall in Warsaw in which, just by sheer luck, nobody was hurt. This is completely unacceptable. So the Russian consulate will have to leave. ... And if these attacks continue, we'll take further action,' he said.
This is not he first time he has taken such an action. Last year, he ordered the Russian Consulate in Poznan to be shut down due to acts of sabotage in the country that Warsaw attributed to Moscow.
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Now, the sole Russian consulate in Poland is located in the city of Gdansk.
Sikorski's statements followed Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's revelation on Sunday night that officials in Warsaw '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
Moscow's ambassador was also summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on Monday for a meeting in the afternoon.
'The ambassador was invited to the ministry at 15:00 (CET),' Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pawel Wronski said on Monday.
Moscow said it would respond to the closure of its consulate in Krakow, a historic city and popular tourist destination in the south of Poland.
'Warsaw deliberately seeks to ruin the relations, by acting against its citizens. An appropriate response to these inadequate steps will follow soon,' Kremlin Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Russian state news agency
After Russia's consulate in Poznan was shut down last year, Moscow retaliated by closing the Polish Consulate in St. Petersburg.
Most of Marywilska 44, which housed around 1,400 stores and was one of the Polish capital's largest shopping centers, was destroyed in the inferno last year and still remains closed, though
the adjacent
Park Handlowy Marywilska 44
is operational.
Poland says it has been targeted by sabotage actions as part of what it says is a 'hybrid war' by Russia to destabilize the countries supporting Ukraine.
Investigators in Warsaw are currently working with counterparts in Lithuania, which has also fallen victim to Russian-backed sabbotage, Polish Justice Minister Adam Bodnar and Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said in a
'We have in-depth knowledge of the order and course of the arson and the way in which the perpetrators documented it. Their actions were organized and directed by an identified person staying in the Russian Federation,' they said.
'The Polish authorities are determined to hold accountable the perpetrators of the heinous acts of sabotage and those who directed them.'
In March, Lithuanian prosecutors accused Moscow's GRU military intelligence agency of being behind an arson attack on a branch of IKEA in the capital Vilnius, which burst into flames three days before the Marywilska 44 fire.
Russia denies any involvement in the arson attacks in either country.
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