The Kremlin has described Poland’s decision to rename the Russian city of Kaliningrad in its official documents as a “hostile act”, as ties continue to fray over the Ukraine war.
Kaliningrad, which sits in an exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic coast, was known by the German name of Königsberg until after the second world war, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed to honour politician Mikhail Kalinin.
On Wednesday, Poland’s development minister, Waldemar Buda, said Kaliningrad would now officially be called Królewiec, its name when it was ruled by the Kingdom of Poland in the 15th and 16th centuries.
“We do not want Russification in Poland and that is why we have decided to change the name in our native language of Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad region,” Buda said, citing a recommendation by a state commission tasked with standardising foreign names in the Polish language.
Warsaw says Kalinin’s connection to the 1940 Katyn massacre
– when thousands of Polish officers were executed by Soviet forces – had negative connotations.
“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 on Tuesday.
Kremlin spokesperson 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 briefing.
Kaliningrad was cut off from Moscow when Lithuania became independent during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
In the city itself, people were split over the Polish move.
“[This land] is conquered by us, by my ancestors … this is our territory and there can be no Królewiec whatsoever,” said an elderly man who did not give his name.
Others appeared to be less upset. One woman noted Lithuania had also renamed the city Królewiec.
“Nothing would change … apart from need to change all their documents. If they want it, let them do it,” she said.
Relations between Poland and Russia have often been strained.
Moscow says it liberated Poland when its forces drove out Nazi forces at the end of the war. Most Poles believe the Soviet Union replaced Nazi occupation with another form of repression.
Poland, a Nato member, strongly backed Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, and has stepped up the demolition of memorials to fallen Soviet troops across the country.
