Russia has refused to hand over to Polish authorities the Gdańsk building that formerly housed its consulate.
Poland ordered the consulate to close today, after sabotage of Polish railway tracks last month for which Warsaw says Moscow was responsible.
Russia claims it still has legal rights to the property, but Polish authorities reject the claim.
The Polish foreign ministry ordered all Russian consular staff to leave Poland, but Russia says it will instead leave an “administrative and technical employee” at the premises to “ensure the inviolability” of the building, which they claim is legally in their possession.
Russia has occupied the villa which housed the consulate since 1951, when Poland’s Communist president Bolesław Bierut allowed the Soviet Union to use the building for free.
Russia, and then the USSR, had previously operated a consulate elsewhere in Gdańsk. That building was seized by Nazi Germany in 1941, and destroyed in 1945 during fighting between the Soviet and German armies.
Andrei Ordash, chargé d’affaires of the Russian embassy in Warsaw, insisted present consulate’s site remains Russian property.
“This building was transferred to us in the early 1950s as compensation for property lost by the Soviet Union during the war; it is our property,” he said.
Russia has maintained this position for years, even after Gdańsk began charging fees for the building’s use in 2013.
Russia has refused to pay this charge. Municipal authorities estimate in the ten years between 2013 and 2023, Russia accumulated a debt of €1.3 million in unpaid rent and another €700,000 in interest.
Gdańsk officials say available documentation does not support Moscow’s ownership claims. According to the land and mortgage registers, the building is owned by the Polish state which has handed the property over for administration to the municipality, they say.
The city authority’s deputy mayor Emilia Lodzińska said December 22 the city would pursue the matter in the Polish courts.
“After obtaining a court ruling favourable to the Polish side, bailiff proceedings will be carried out, resulting in the seizure of the property,” she said.
However, the city estimates recovering the building through legal means may in practice take two or three years.
The Polish authorities have confirmed the building which housed the consulate will lose its protected status under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations at midnight December 23.
In 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Warsaw municipal authorities seized another building Moscow claimed as its property as part of a long-running legal dispute.
Warsaw hoped to hand over the building to the local Ukrainian community but that proved impractical due to the site’s poor condition. The space is now being redeveloped and dedicated to providing housing for municipal employees.
Since last year, Poland has closed down all three of Russia’s consulates in response to Moscow’s alleged campaign of sabotage on Polish territory. Russia has taken retaliatory actions to close down Polish consulates on its territory.
As a result the two countries now have only their respective embassies in Warsaw and Moscow remaining as diplomatic outposts.
