Grave of Polish man killed in Russian detention marked by sheet of paper with misspelled name

The grave of Krzysztof Galos, a Polish citizen who died in a Russian pretrial detention centre in 2023, is marked with a laminated sheet of paper bearing a misspelled rendition of his name, according to an image released by the Polish media outlet Wyborcza last week.

The grave marker, which Wyborcza journalists tracked down in a cemetery in the city of Taganrog, in southern Russia’s Rostov region, mistakenly renders Galos’s given name in Cyrillic as “Kristof-andrey”, a russified form of the Polish Krzysztof-Andrzej.

A candle placed at the site, decorated with the Polish coat of arms, appeared to have been left by employees of the Polish Embassy in Moscow, but a representative of Poland’s Foreign Ministry was unable to confirm who had visited the grave.

Galos’s family, with the support of the Polish Foreign Ministry, has demanded the return of his body to Poland, but the Russian authorities are yet to respond. An investigation into Galos’s death is being carried out by the District Prosecutor’s Office in Krakow.

Krzysztof Galos died in Taganrog Pretrial Detention Centre No. 2 in June 2023, but his death was not confirmed by Russian officials until March 2026. He had been arrested by Russian forces after travelling via Ukraine to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region, allegedly to visit his girlfriend.

Ukrainian prisoners of war held in the same facility as Galos told media outlet Slidstvo.info in February that a Polish national had died there after being tortured. On one occasion, Galos was reportedly brutally kicked and beaten with sticks, an incident believed to have led to his death.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Galos was detained for “opposing the Special Military Operation”, the term used in Russia for the war in Ukraine. The ministry claimed that he had died of natural causes due to “acute cardiovascular failure”, noting that his burial was carried out “at the expense of the Russian Federation”.