Russia on Wednesday accused Poland of “hostile actions” following Warsaw’s decision to revert to using the historical name of the Kaliningrad exclave. At stake is partly the invasion and war in Ukraine, but not only. “This is no longer Russophobia, these are processes close to madness,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“We don’t want Russification in Poland, so we decided to change the name of the city of Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad region to our native language,” said Polish Development Minister Waldemar Buda.
Instead of Kaliningrad, the Poles will begin to call the enclave and the main city Krowiec – Conisberga, in Portuguese, the name of the times of the Prussian domain. This historic name fell in 1946, when the enclave bordering Poland and Lithuania, next to the Baltic Sea (and base of a major Russian fleet), came under Soviet control and was renamed in honor of one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution. , Mikhail Kalinin.
“The fact that a large city close to our border is named after Kalinin, a criminal who was partly responsible for, among other things, issuing the decision for the mass murder of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940, evokes negative emotions in Poland.” said Buda, referring to the massacre of 25,000 anti-communists in a forest near Smolensk, ordered by Stalin.
Less than a month ago, Poland had already announced that it would install thousands of cameras and motion sensors at the border of the enclave, to prevent the illegal entry of migrants – which Warsaw says is being orchestrated by Moscow. The barbed wire fence that will be erected over 200 kilometers is being supervised. A similar system already exists on the border with Russia’s ally Belarus.
Russian retreat in Bakhmut?
Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Wednesday that Russian troops were withdrawing from some areas in Bakhmut after limited counterattacks by Kiev’s army. “We are seeing the results of the effective actions of our units,” he told Telegram. “In some parts of this front, the enemy could not resist the attack of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated up to two kilometers”indicated.
The head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, reminded that the counter-offensive being prepared by the army may not be the last.. “Don’t take this counter-offensive as the last, because we don’t know how it will turn out.”told the German newspaper Image. Kuleba insisted that if the operation does not have the desired result, there will be new counter-attacks.
Source: DN
