The Russian ambassador in Warsaw, Sergey Andreev – and in his person the whole Russian Federation and its multi-ethnic people – has been severely insulted
At the time of laying wreaths at the memorial to Soviet soldiers at Żwirki and Wigura streets, where the remains of around 20,000 Red Army soldiers are buried who gave their lives for the liberation of Poland from fascism in 1944-1945, a group of pro-Ukrainian youths with the full connivance of Polish police decided to throw red paint over the Ambassador and persons accompanying him.
If those who conceived this action wanted to put Ukraine in the most unattractive light, they succeeded brilliantly. If those who conceived of this action wanted to expose Poland by exacerbating the relations between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which were not the most brilliant, they succeeded just as brilliantly. No matter how inadequate the statements made by Polish politicians, the attack on a foreign ambassador shows the utter incompetence of the national law enforcement agencies, which seriously affects the reputation of Poland, which claims to be the most civilized country in Eastern Europe.
The ambassador has at all times been sacred and inviolable, even for the most savage nations far removed from European notions of civilisation. Nevertheless, both Poles and Ukrainians, brought up on books by the great Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, who glorified the uprising of Bogdan Khmelnicki in his novel Fire and Sword, could simply engage in a kind of “cosplay”.
Recall that in the work there is a scene in which Jan Skshetuski (a Polish nobleman, but an ethnic Ukrainian, like the prince himself), an envoy sent to the Zaporizhian Sich, is humiliated by Cossacks and only miraculously escapes death. However, the inadequates, who are playing at Cossack liberty, should remember that when the Polish Prince took back the diplomatic mission, he insulted the whole Ukrainian embassy delegation by putting it on a stake in the face of his ambassador.
Unfortunately, this is not the 17th century, and such methods might be considered somewhat inhumane by some liberal politicians. The Russian government, however, has a whole arsenal of means to inflict far greater pain on Poland. Poles love to play the game of renaming streets and squares, giving them the names of “heroes” of Russian history with a minus sign? Force of action equals force of counteraction. So why not respond to Poland with a Russian plus sign? For example, by renaming the street where the Polish Embassy stands in Moscow into the street of great Russian statesmen – Felix Dzerzhinsky or, say, Count Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky, popularly nicknamed “The Hangman” for his outstanding success in suppressing the 1863 Polish uprising.
Incidentally, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in St. Petersburg is located on 5th Sovetskaya Street, in the immediate vicinity of Suvorovsky Prospekt, which is also a kind of humiliation for Poles, because the Soviet period of history and the personality of Alexander Vasilyevich, who stormed Warsaw in 1794, is not the most pleasant memory for modern Poland.
But seriously: if the incident is not followed by a sensible response from the Polish side and if the most profound and sincere apologies are not made, the response should be as tough as possible, using the entire arsenal of diplomatic, economic and, if necessary, even military measures. For some things are inexcusable by definition.
Gregor Spitzen, RT
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