Poland is reverting to utilizing its historic identify for Kaliningrad, the Russian metropolis and administrative area that sits on its border
WARSAW, Poland — Poland is reverting to utilizing its historic identify for Kaliningrad, the Russian metropolis and administrative area that sits on its border.
Any more, it will likely be designated on Polish maps as Krolewiec, based mostly on the advice of the federal government fee for geographic names overseas.
The Kremlin has reacted angrily: spokesperson Dmitry Peskov referred to as it a “course of bordering on madness,” going past Russophobia.
Town, previously often called Koenigsberg, was ceded from Germany to the Soviet Union after the Second World Warfare. In 1946 it was renamed Kaliningrad, after Mikhail Kalinin, one of many leaders of the Bolshevik revolution.
The Polish authorities level out that Kalinin was one in all six Soviet officers who ordered the execution of greater than 21,000 Polish prisoners of warfare at Katyn and elsewhere in 1940.
They mentioned the present identify was synthetic, missing any connection to town or the area, however the centuries-old identify of Krolewiec was a part of Poland’s cultural heritage.
The warfare in neighboring Ukraine has added to the long-standing tensions between Russia and Poland, an ally of Kyiv which has been supplying Ukraine’s army with weapons and urgent for extra worldwide backing for Ukraine.
Lately, Poland has been the goal of incendiary statements by Russian politicians and a few public figures.
Russia’s ambassador to Poland, Sergey Andreev, was summoned to Poland’s Overseas Ministry on Wednesday over an incident final week within the Black Sea area during which a Russian fighter jet carried out harmful maneuvers close to a Polish aircraft which was on patrol for the European border and coastal guard, FRONTEX.
On Might 9, celebrated as Victory Day in Russia, Andreev was prevented by Ukrainian and Polish activists from laying a wreath at a monument in Warsaw to the Soviet troopers killed preventing the Nazis.