MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Poland’s decision to rename the Russian city of Kaliningrad in its official documents was a “hostile act”, as bilateral ties continue to fray over the war in Ukraine.

Kaliningrad was known by the German name of Koenigsberg until after World War II, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed to honour Soviet politician Mikhail Kalinin.

Warsaw said on Tuesday that Kalinin’s connection to the 1940 Katyn massacre — when thousands of Polish military officers were executed by Soviet forces — had negative connotations and that the city should now be referred to as Krolewiec, its name when it was ruled by the Kingdom of Poland in the 15th and 16th centuries.

“The current Russian name of this city is an artificial baptism unrelated to either the city or the region,” Poland’s committee on geographical standardisation said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the decision “bordered on madness”.

“We know that throughout history Poland has slipped from time to time into this madness of hatred towards Russians,” he told a daily news briefing.

Relations between Poland and Russia have historically often been very strained, including during and after World War Two.

Sentenced to jail

Two Russian soldiers from Kamchatka in the far east have been sentenced to two and a half years each in prison for refusing to fight in Ukraine, human rights group OVD-Info said.

In separate rulings, the men, identified in military court documents as Alexander Stepanov and Andrei Mikhailov, were found guilty of refusing orders to go into combat during wartime. Russian President Vladimir Putin amended the criminal code last year to include prison sentences of up to three years for such violations.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2023