Poland says Russia recruited arsonists for Warsaw fire on social media

Poland's foreign minister says his country has evidence that Russia recruited people on the Telegram messaging service to carry out last year's massive shopping centre fire in Warsaw.

Speaking to the BBC in an exclusive interview, Radek Sikorski said Moscow's actions were "completely unacceptable" and that a second Russian consulate in Poland had been closed as a result.

His comments come after a Polish investigation concluded that the Marywilska shopping centre fire was orchestrated by Moscow's intelligence services.

Russia denied its involvement, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accusing Poland of being "Russophobic".

The May 2024 fire destroyed 1,400 small businesses, with many of the staff there belonging to Warsaw's Vietnamese community.

"We have evidence that they commissioned people living in Poland, they commissioned them on Telegram and paid them to set fire to this huge shopping mall," Sikorski said on Monday.

"It was by miracle that nobody was hurt, but this is completely unacceptable."

The foreign minister told the BBC he had decided Russia's presence in Poland must be "further curtailed" and that Russia's consulate in Krakow had now been closed in order to try and make it harder for Moscow to "spy" on Poland.

"We will take further decisions if they continue these hybrid attacks," Sikorski said.

Hybrid warfare is a term used to describe how a hostile state carries out an anonymous, deniable attack, usually in highly suspicious circumstances.

It will be enough to harm their opponent, especially their infrastructure assets, but stop short of being an attributable act of war.

Only one consulate now remains open in Poland, alongside the embassy. The mission in the city of Poznań was closed last year after Warsaw accused Russia of acts of sabotage and cyberwarfare.

When asked on Monday why Poland did not just sever all diplomatic ties, Sikorski said: "I hope it doesn't come to that."

Responding to the closure of the Krakow consulate, Peskov said: "All these accusations are absolutely groundless, baseless.

"There are a lot of different accusations against Russia being voiced in Poland. This part is absolutely Russophobic and unfriendly towards our country."

He added: "As for the reduction of Russia's diplomatic presence in Poland, these are integral parts of a common chain aimed at curtailing the already deplorable state of bilateral relations. Poland chooses hostility and unfriendliness towards us."

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Poland has detained and convicted several people accused of sabotage on behalf of Russian intelligence services.

Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, meanwhile, told state media: "Warsaw continues to deliberately destroy relations, acting against the interests of citizens".

Poland carried out a year-long investigation into the shopping centre incident, before concluding the fire was organised by an unnamed person in Russia.

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Sunday said that some of those responsible were already in custody, while all the others alleged to have been involved had been identified and were being searched for.

Many workers lost important documents and large sums of cash in the fire, which were kept at the shopping centre due to fear of break-ins at home.

Another shopping centre in Warsaw, Modlinska 6D, was opened in October last year, with traders relocating their businesses to the new site.