Poland has stated that it will shut down the Russian consulate in Krakow on May 12 after finding evidence that the country was behind a fire that ripped through a Warsaw shopping mall in 2024.
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.
Sikorski 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 the first time Sikorski has taken such an action. In 2024, he ordered the Russian consulate in Poznan to be shut down because of acts of sabotage in the country that Warsaw attributed to Moscow.
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 the night of May 11 that officials in Warsaw “now know for certain that the massive fire on Marywilska was the result of arson commissioned by Russian services.”
Moscow’s ambassador was also summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on May 12 for a meeting in the afternoon.
“The ambassador was invited to the ministry at 15:00 (CET),” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pawel Wronski said on May 12.
Moscow stated that it would respond to the closure of its consulate in Krakow, a historic city and popular tourist destination in the south of Poland.
After Russia’s consulate in Poznan was shut down in 2024, 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 2024 inferno and still remains closed, although the adjacent Park Handlowy Marywilska 44 is operational.
Poland says it has been targeted by perpetrators of sabotage as part of what it says is a “hybrid war” by Russia to destabilize the countries supporting Ukraine.
“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 in the capital of Vilnius on a branch of IKEA, which burst into flames three days before the Marywilska 44 fire.
Russia denies any involvement in the arson attacks in either country.
