Poland to close Russian consulate in Poznan, citing alleged sabotage attempts

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland is shutting down the Russian consulate in the western city of Poznan due to suspected Russian attempts at sabotage, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Tuesday.

Moscow said it would retaliate against the decision, Russia’s state-run RIA news agency reported.

Poland says its role as a hub for the transport of military supplies to Ukraine has made it a target for Russian espionage and acts of sabotage and arson.

“If we expel the ambassador, they (Russians) will of course do the same. This has not happened yet, but if acts of sabotage continue, it cannot be ruled out”, Sikorski said in the evening during an interview with state-controlled broadcaster TVP Info.

The move to shut the consulate follows a court case involving a 51-year-old Ukrainian citizen accused of planning to set fire to a paint factory in the western Polish city of Wroclaw.

Prosecutors had reached an agreement for the suspect to serve three years in prison, but a Wroclaw court rejected the deal, saying it was too lenient, the National Prosecutor’s Office said on Wednesday, confirming information published last week by the daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

The case is now back with the prosecution and is expected to return to court for trial.

“The court found that there was strong evidence that there was an attempt of sabotage and that foreign intelligence was behind this sabotage,” Sikorski told reporters in the afternoon.

“As the minister of foreign affairs, I have information that the Russian Federation is behind sabotage attempts in Poland and allied countries. In connection with this, we withdrew our consent to the functioning of the Russian consulate in Poznan.”

RIA quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as calling the move “another hostile step”. She promised a “painful” response.

Western officials believe operatives paid by Russia are behind a number of crimes across Europe, including break-ins and arson at factories and critical infrastructure, physical attacks and even a reported assassination plot against the CEO of Germany’s largest arms company.

Russia has regularly denied any involvement.

The National Prosecutor’s Office also said that as part of ongoing investigations, charges of espionage had been brought against nearly 20 people.

(Reporting by Barbara Erling, Alan Charlish, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Anna Koper; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Gareth Jones and Nick Zieminski)