Moscow will close Poland’s consulate in St. Petersburg in response to a similar action taken by Warsaw
The Russian Foreign Ministry has ordered the closure of the Polish consulate general in St. Petersburg and declared its employees persona non grata. The move comes in response to similar action taken by Warsaw.
Moscow has notified Warsaw that the mission will be closed from January 10, 2025 and ordered three Polish diplomats to leave the country before this date.
In October, Warsaw ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in the city of Poznan and the expulsion of its employees after a suspected saboteur was arrested in the city of Wroclaw. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski claimed that Russian intelligence had been behind the alleged conspiracy.
Several NATO member countries, including the UK and Poland, have accused Russia of being behind warehouse fires, alleging that unwitting local proxies were being recruited to do Moscow’s bidding.
In October, the head of the British Security Service (MI5) claimed that Russia was behind “mayhem” on British streets, and demanded more funding and greater authority to counter this alleged menace.
Moscow has denied all these allegations as nonsensical. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin said that Western politicians were trying to scare their own populations by invoking an imaginary Russian threat in order to distract their attention from domestic troubles.
In Thursday’s statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry explained Moscow’s decision to close the Polish consulate.
“In recent years, Polish authorities have implemented an openly hostile policy towards Russia, almost completely dismantled the architecture of Russian-Polish relations built over many decades, and have openly declared the need to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on our country.”
According to the ministry, one of the manifestations of this anti-Russian orientation was the closure of the Russian Consulate General in Poznan under a “far-fetched pretext.”
“Moscow has been taking and will continue to take tough countermeasures to any unfriendly steps towards Russia,” the statement concludes.
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