Russia’s ambassador to Poland could have avoided a dousing in red paint during a ceremony at a Soviet military memorial in Warsaw, if he had followed the advice of the Polish Foreign Ministry to avoid the event, Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister, has said.
On Monday Sergey Andreyev was surrounded by demonstrators as he tried to lay a wreath at a Soviet war memorial to mark the anniversary of the Soviet Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, (May 9).
Protesters called him a “fascist” before two women got close enough to throw red paint at him. Andreyev was forced to abandon the ceremony and had to return to his car under a police escort.
“Russian crimes in Ukraine are such a terrible experience for so many people, that the ambassador’s presence at the memorial to Soviet soldiers was provocative,” Morawiecki said.
“The ambassador should have listened to the Polish foreign ministry’s warnings,” he added said.
The women who threw the paint are believed to have been Ukrainian.