Poland closes Russian consulate in Kraków after accusing Moscow of Warsaw mall arson

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has ordered the closing of Russia’s consulate in Kraków, Poland’s second city, after accusing Moscow of carrying out “a reprehensible act of sabotage” at a Warsaw shopping centre last year.

A massive fire broke out on 12 May 2024 at the Marywilska shopping centre, which housed nearly 1,400 commercial units. While no one was injured in the fire, the mall was completely destroyed.

“We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping centre in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by the Russian special services. Some of the perpetrators have already been detained, all the others are identified and searched for,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X on Sunday.

In a comment to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova vowed “an adequate response to these inadequate steps”, saying that “Warsaw continues to deliberately destroy relations with Moscow, acting against the interests of its citizens”.

Tusk said in March that Lithuanian investigators suspected Russian involvement in the Marywilska fire, in addition to a separate arson attack on an IKEA store in VIlnius, Lithuania’s capital, three days prior on 9 May. According to Lithuanian prosecutors, Russian military intelligence hired Ukrainian citizens to carry out the attacks.

In October, Poland announced it would shutter the Russian consulate in the city of Poznań due to suspected Russian sabotage attempts, prompting Russia to close a Polish consulate in a tit-for-tat move, as relations between both states continue to deteriorate amid accusations of Russia deploying a hybrid warfare strategy to destabilise countries in eastern Europe.