Poland renames Russia’s Kaliningrad, drawing Moscow’s ire
- The enclave’s historic name, Konigsberg, will be used instead, as the Polish government moves to reject ‘Russification’
- The Soviet Union began calling the city Kaliningrad in 1946 to honour the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mikhail Kalinin.
Poland will stop using the official name for Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave and revert to its historic equivalent, the government in Warsaw said on Wednesday, drawing Moscow’s ire.
Citing a recommendation by a state commission tasked with standardising foreign names in the Polish language, Poland’s development minister Waldemar Buda said Kaliningrad would now officially be called Konigsberg (“Krolewiec” in Polish).
“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 in a statement on Wednesday.
The historic name for the enclave bordering Poland and Lithuania will now be used in official documents and maps, a move that triggered an angry response from Russia.
“It’s not even Russophobia any more, these are processes close to madness that are going on in Poland,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.