Poland orders the Russian Consulate in Krakow closed after Moscow was blamed for a 2024 arson attack

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s foreign minister said Monday that he was ordering the closure of the Russian Consulate in the southern city of Krakow, after authorities blamed Moscow for a fire that destroyed a shopping center in Warsaw last year.

The national prosecutor’s office also said Monday that it had pressed charges against two Ukrainian citizens who cooperated with the people who carried out the arson, identifying them only as Daniil B. and Oleksander V.

The fire broke out May 12, 2024, in the Marywilska 44 shopping center that housed around 1,400 shops and service points, a budget marketplace in a warehouse-like structure in a northern district of Warsaw. Many of the vendors were from Vietnam, and it inflicted tragedy on many in Warsaw’s Vietnamese community.

“This was a huge fire of a shopping mall in Warsaw in which, just by sheer luck, nobody was hurt. This is completely unacceptable,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said. “So the Russian Consulate will have to leave. And if these attacks continue, we’ll take further action.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the accusations as being groundless and rooted in anti-Russia sentiment. He also said that Warsaw’s decision to close the consulate would damage bilateral relations between Russia and Poland, which Peskov described as already being in “a deplorable state.”

“Poland is choosing hostility against us,” he told journalists on Monday.

Last year, Sikorski already ordered the closure of the Russian Consulate in Poznan, one of three at the time in Poland, in response to acts of sabotage, including arson attacks that he said were sponsored by Moscow.

This leaves only one Russian Consulate in Poland, in the city of Gdansk.

There are rising concerns in Europe over Russian attempts to destabilize the region through covert operations.

Countries along NATO’s eastern flank, like Poland and the Baltic states, feel especially vulnerable. In March, Lithuania accused Russia of carrying out an arson attack at an IKEA store in the capital, Vilnius, last year.