Poland has lodged a protest against the removal of Polish flags from two sites in Russia where thousands of Polish officers murdered by the Soviets during World War Two are buried, saying it is an “act of hostility” and “element of an anti-Polish campaign”.
The Katyn cemetery, near Smolensk, contains the remains of 4,412 Polish prisoners. The graves of a further 6,300 are located at the Polish war cemetery in Mednoye. They were among the more than 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia killed in mass executions by the Soviet Union in 1940.
The absence of the Polish flag at the Smolensk cemetery was reported by Russian media, citing a social media post by Smolensk mayor Andrey Borisov showing a bare flagpole alongside one with a Russian flag.
“There can be no Polish flags on Russian memorials! And after the frank anti-Russian statements of Polish politicians – even more so,” Borisov wrote. “Katyn is a Russian memorial, it is Russian history.
Irina Velikanova, director of the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, said that the presence of the Polish and Russian flags alongside each other had been a symbol of friendship between the two countries but the current political situation had changed matters.
“What is happening today has nothing to do with friendship”, she said, arguing that flying the Polish flag had just been a “gesture of goodwill” not legislated by the statute of the Katyn memorial or the intergovernmental agreement from 1994.
Speaking to Polsat News, Paweł Mucha, a special adviser to President Andrzej Duda, said that Poland’s foreign ministry had taken an “official position” and “expressed a protest” about the removal of the flags, and that such actions were aimed against the whole of the Western world.
“These are acts of hostility that show that the Russians are aware that defence of Ukraine would not be possible to this extent and in this time without the support of the West,” Mucha added.
The Polish consul in Smolensk has confirmed the removal of the flag from the Katyn memorial and demanded an explanation, deputy foreign minister Marcin Przydacz told Polskie Radio.
“The presence of a Polish flag and appropriate respect for this place should be a standard of civilisation,” Przydacz added. “If Russia does not uphold this standard, then it really shows the true face of its government.”
Stanisław Żaryn, the spokesman for Poland’s security services, called the removal of the flags from the two cemeteries “another act of hostility by the Russian Federation” and “an element of the anti-Polish campaign carried out by the Kremlin for many years”.
The removal of the Polish flags from the cemeteries in Katyn and Miednoje is another act of hostility by the Russian Federation and, at the same time, an element of the anti-Polish campaign carried out by the Kremlin for many years. 1/5
— Stanisław Żaryn (@StZaryn) June 25, 2022
For decades after the war, the Soviet Union continued to deny responsibility for the Katyn massacres, claiming that they had been carried out by Nazi Germany. In 1990, Moscow finally acknowledged responsibility for the crimes, though recent years have seen a renewed revisionist trend in Russia regarding wartime history.
Meanwhile, Poland has dismantled a number of monuments to the Soviet Red Army as part of a drive to “decommunise” public spaces that has been stepped up since Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia has criticised such actions, saying that they dishonour the memory of those who “liberated” Poland.
In April, local authorities and activists in Smolensk drove construction vehicles to the Polish war memorial, threatening to destroy it in response to the demolition of Soviet monuments in Poland.
Main image credit: M. Śmiarowski/KPRM (under CC BY-NC 2.0)
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
