500 Soviet monuments will be demolished in Poland

The authorities of Poland intend to demolish about 500 Soviet monuments across the country. This was announced in an interview with OneT.pl portal by the president of the Institute of National Memory Lukash Kaminsky. According to him, the Soviet monuments should be transferred to museums symbolizing the "dominance of the communist system over Poland", while the state will continue to take care of the monuments on the site of Soviet military burials.

The institute’s demolition project will send local self -government bodies in the coming weeks. "Their preservation is a consequence of the incomplete in Poland of the beginning of the beginning of the 90s. It was a fatal mistake that has been a reason used in propaganda and provocations against our homeland for many years," Kaminsky said.

The head of the institute suggested that Moscow would protest against these actions. “The Kremlin’s diplomatic service reacts very violently every time a monument dedicated to the Soviet Army is liquidated in Poland,” he explained. At the same time, Kaminsky added that the country's Foreign Ministry will constantly inform about the demolition of monuments.

In December 2015, the Polish Ambassador to Russia Katazhina Pelchinsk-Nalench said that the dismantling of Soviet monuments did not violate the international obligations of Warsaw and is in the competence of the Polish authorities. “The so -called symbolic monuments, where no one is buried, is under the jurisdiction of local authorities and in accordance with certain procedures you can dismantle them,” said Pelchinsk -Nalench, commenting on the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry that Warsaw, dismantling the monuments to Soviet soldiers in Poland, violates the position of a number of bilateral agreements with Moscow.

The ambassador noted that these monuments "are not protected by international agreements, including bilateral agreements between Poland and Russia."

The day before, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned Warsaw’s actions related to the demolition of the Monument of the Gratitude of the Red Army in the Polish city of Melets.

The accusations of unleashing the "War of Monuments" Moscow put forward Warsaw before. So in early July 2015, the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed indignation at the authorities of the Polish city of Nova Sul in Lyubu Voivodeship, by the decision of which on June 30, without coordination with the Russian side, a monument of the "Brotherhood in arms" of the soldiers of the Polish and Red Army was demolished.

“We consider this frankly unfinished step of the Polish side as a direct and gross violation of the provisions of the Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic of Poland on the burials and places of memory of the victims of wars and repressions of February 22, 1994,” the document says. “In Warsaw, they should finally understand that the“ War of the Monuments ”unleashed in Poland is fraught with the most negative consequences for which the responsibility for which will be fully liable for it, for which it will be fully for its entirety initiators ".