Earlier, on November 19, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that Poland had decided to close the Russian consulate in Gdansk, the last one functioning in the country, after two sabotages on the railway between Lublin and Warsaw. In response, the Russian Federation closed the Consulate General of Poland in Irkutsk.
The Russian Consulate in Gdansk stopped working by midnight on December 23, but the Russians refuse to give up the premises.
The authorities of Gdansk tried to return the building of the closed Russian consulate to the city, but no one opened the doors to officials, PAP wrote on December 24.
According to the press secretary of the Gdansk City Hall, Izabella Kozicka-Prus, “someone remains inside” the building.
The Russian Embassy, in a letter to the city authorities, informed that an “administrative and technical employee” would live in the premises of the consulate.
The Russian side believes that the property belongs to the Russian Federation, and therefore asks “to take all necessary measures to ensure its integrity,” Vice-President of Gdansk Emilia Lodzinska told PAP.
However, according to the registry entries, the owner of both properties is the State Treasury, she added.
As Lodzinskaya pointed out, “the Russians’ claim that the real estate belongs to them [РФ]are erroneous and false.”
If representatives of the Russian Federation continue to be in the buildings of the former consulate, the issue of rights to them will be resolved in court, the Polish Foreign Ministry said.
At the same time, according to Zakharova, the building of the Consulate General in Gdansk allegedly belongs to the Russian Federation.
“If someone decides to do something like this, to take over Russian real estate, for starters [рекомендуем] “calculate all the possible consequences of such illegal and provocative actions,” the speaker of the Russian Foreign Ministry threatened. “I think there are already many examples of how Russia responds and how painful these answers are for those who commit legal outrages against our country.”
