Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, has said Moscow should cut its ties with Poland amid a deepening diplomatic row over an embassy school in Warsaw.
Polish police showed up at the Russian school on Kieleckiej Street in Warsaw on Saturday morning in what Russia’s Foreign Ministry said was a bid to seize the property and a “blatant violation” of the Geneva Convention on diplomatic relations.
Andrey Ordash, minister counselor of the Russian Embassy told the Tass news agency that Polish authorities had given a deadline of 7 p.m. Moscow time for staff to vacate the building. Children were among 29 people at the school from which equipment had to be removed within a week.
Medvedev wrote on Twitter that he saw “no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland” in which “there is no one but Russophobes in power.” He added that Ukraine “is full of Polish mercenaries, who should be ruthlessly exterminated like stinky rats.”
Since the start of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Medvedev, the current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has used inflammatory rhetoric against the West and even suggested that Moscow takes its war as far as its border with Poland.
The Russian Foreign Ministry described Warsaw’s move as “insolent” and said that it had acted “beyond the framework of civilized inter-state relations.” It vowed there would be “a harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Polish interests in Russia.”
Kremlin propagandist Mikhail Leontiev suggested on the program Solovyov Live that Moscow should come up with a “creative” punishment for Warsaw, which would involve summoning the Polish ambassador to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
“Tie him to a bench and flog him,” he said in a suggestion that provoked laughter from the host in the clip tweeted by TheKremlinYap.
I see no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland. This state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries, who should be ruthlessly exterminated like stinky rats
— Polish text below —
Nie widzę…
— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) April 29, 2023
Lukasz Jasina, a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman, told Reuters that courts had confirmed that the school “belongs to the Polish state and was taken by Russia illegally.” Newsweek has contacted the Polish and Russian foreign ministries for comment.
Poland and Russia’s tense relations have soured further over the war in Ukraine with Warsaw one of Kyiv’s strongest allies and playing a key role in pushing for Western military assistance against Russian aggression.
Soon after the war started, Poland expelled 45 Russian diplomats suspected of working for Moscow’s intelligence services.
This week, Russia’s ambassador to Warsaw, Sergei Andreyev, said Polish prosecutors had seized money from the frozen bank accounts of the Russian Embassy and trade mission.
The post Russia’s Medvedev Attacks Polish ‘Rats’ After School Seized in Warsaw appeared first on Newsweek.
