Poland to close Russian consulate after rail ‘sabotage’

WARSAW: (Web News)Poland said Wednesday it would close the Russian consulate in the northern port city of Gdansk, after accusing Moscow of orchestrating the sabotage of a train line earlier this week.
Poland had already shut other consulates outside Warsaw, and the move would leave the Russian embassy in the capital as Moscow’s only diplomatic mission in the country.
“I have decided to withdraw consent for the operation of the Russian consulate in Gdansk,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told journalists on Wednesday.
Polish officials accused Russia of sending two Ukrainians to sabotage part of the Lublin-Warsaw train line, resulting in damage to the tracks.
Sikorski dubbed it an “act of state terror” but the Kremlin denied the allegations and accused Poland of “Russophobia.”
Russia’s foreign ministry said it would retaliate for the closure.
“As a reciprocal measure, Russia will reduce Poland’s diplomatic and consular presence in Russia,” the ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to state media.
Ties between Moscow and Warsaw nosedived after Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion, with Poland taking in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and becoming the main route for Western arms supplies to Kyiv.