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 has promised a response.
” This building will now belong to the Warsaw City Hall “, told AFP the spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lukasz Jasina, stressing that it 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 Warsaw residents the “ nest of spies to offer it to Ukraine, which is fighting Russian forces. At the time, these were ten-storey buildings built in the 1970s in the south of the capital which had been used in the past by Soviet diplomats, then by the Russian embassy.
Immediate Russian reaction
Russia protested immediately. ” It’s an illegal act, an incursion into a diplomatic site. said its ambassador to Warsaw, Sergei Andreyev, in a video broadcast by the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti.
” 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 Sergei Andreyev.
The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that: “ These hostile actions by the Polish authorities constitute a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 “. An act ” so daring of Warsaw, far beyond civilized interstate communication, will not remain without our severe reaction and the consequences for the Polish authorities “, he warned.
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