Poland seizes Russian high school in Warsaw, Russia announces retaliation

Polish authorities outside a former Russian high school in Warsaw, Poland, April 29, 2023. © JAAP ARRIENS / AFP

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Poland announced on Saturday, April 29, that it had seized the building of the Russian high school in Warsaw. An act immediately qualified as "illegal" by Russia, which promised a response.

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This building will now belong to the Warsaw City Hall " Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina told AFP, stressing that this is a procedure of "referral by bailiff" on behalf of the municipality.

A year ago, Warsaw City Hall seized a former Russian diplomatic site, the subject of a legal dispute between Poland and Russia and nicknamed by Warsawns the "nest of spies", to offer it to Ukraine fighting Russian forces. At the time, these were ten-storey buildings built in the 1970s in the south of the capital that had been used in the past by Soviet diplomats and then by the Russian embassy.

Immediate Russian reaction

Russia protested immediately. "This is an illegal act, an incursion on a diplomatic site," its ambassador to Warsaw, Sergei Andreyev, said in a video broadcast by Russia's state-run Ria Novosti news agency.

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Of course, a reaction will follow. " he stressed, adding that Russia would retaliate under the "principle of reciprocity". "The school will continue its activities in other premises of the Russian diplomatic mission, we will ensure a good end of the school year for our children and the organization of exams," said Sergey Andreyev.

The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that: "These hostile actions by the Polish authorities constitute a flagrant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations." Such a bold act by Warsaw, far beyond civilized interstate communication, will not remain without our harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities," he warned.

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• Poland
• Russia
• Geopolitics
• Diplomacy