WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s foreign minister said Wednesday that he will order the closure of the last Russian consulate still operating in the country after authorities said two Ukrainian citizens working for Moscow are suspected of blowing up a railway line in Poland.
Radek Sikorski said he had repeatedly warned Russia that its diplomatic and consular presence would be reduced further if it didn’t cease hostile actions against Poland, Polish news agency PAP reported.
“In connection with this, though it will not be our full response, I have decided to withdraw consent for the operation of the last Russian consulate in Gdansk,” he said. He added that Russia would be formally notified within hours.
“This time it was an act of not only subversion, as happened before, but an act of state terror as its clear intention was to cause human casualties,” Sikorski said. The closure will leave Russia with only its embassy in Warsaw.
In response, Moscow will “reduce Poland’s diplomatic and consular presence in Russia,” the state news agency RIA Novosti cited Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has described the weekend explosion on a line linking Poland’s capital, Warsaw, to the border with Ukraine as an “unprecedented act of sabotage.” The blast damaged tracks near Mika, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Warsaw. No one was hurt.
In a separate weekend incident, power lines were destroyed in the area of Puławy, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Lublin in eastern Poland.
Asked about Sikorski’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia’s “relations with Poland have deteriorated completely.”
“This is probably a manifestation of this degradation, of the desire of the Polish authorities to reduce to zero any possibility of consular or diplomatic ties. In this case, one can only express regret,” Peskov told reporters during his daily conference call.
On Tuesday, Tusk told the Polish parliament that the two suspects had been collaborating with the Russian secret services for a long time. He said their identities were known but could not be revealed to the public because of the ongoing investigation, and that the pair had already left Poland, crossing into Belarus.
POLISH PRIME MINISTER CALLS ATTACK ON RAILROAD ‘UNPRECEDENTED ACT OF SABOTAGE’
Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, according to data collected by The Associated Press. Moscow’s goal, Western officials say, is to undermine support for Ukraine, spark fear and divide European societies.
Poland ordered the closure of two other Russian consulates in recent years. The consulate in Krakow was closed earlier this year after Poland determined that a fire that destroyed a shopping center in Warsaw in 2024 was the result of arson ordered by Russian intelligence service.
In 2024, Sikorski ordered the closure of the consulate in Poznan, in response to acts of sabotage including arson attacks that he said were sponsored by Moscow.
