Russia has refused to hand over to Polish authorities the Gdańsk building that formerly housed its consulate.
The Polish government ordered the closure of the Gdańsk consulate in November, after accusing Moscow of being behind acts of sabotage earlier this year.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it will not vacate the building of its former consulate in Gdańsk, despite a Polish order requiring the mission to cease operations by midnight December 23.
In a letter to the Polish authorities the Russians claimed that the property which housed its remaining consulate in Poland will remain occupied by a technical and administrative employee of the Russian Embassy after the deadline.
Representatives of the Gdańsk municipal authority attempted to enter the building on 23 December but it was still occupied.
Polish officials insist the building belongs to the Polish state and warn they will pursue legal action to secure its immediate handover if Russia continues to refuse cooperation.
Russia has occupied the property 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.
The Russian Embassy in Warsaw insists that the 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,” it stated.
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.
The building which housed the consulate lots its protected status under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations at midnight December 23.
This is not the first time the two countries have been in dispute over property occupied by the Russian Federation in Poland.
In 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Warsaw municipality seized a property which had been claimed by Moscow and which is now being used for municipal housing.
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.
