Anti-war protest in Warsaw was legal says interior minister
The Polish interior minister has said that the emotions of Ukrainian women taking part in an anti-war protest, during which Russia's ambassador to Poland was splashed with a red substance, are understandable.
Sergey Andreyev was forced to abandon his attempts to lay a wreath at a Soviet war memorial in Warsaw on Monday and commemorate the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, and had to return to his car under police escort.
"The rally of protesters against Russia's invasion of Ukraine was legal," Minister Mariusz Kamiński wrote on Twitter, adding that "emotions of Ukrainian women, whose husbands have been bravely fighting in the defence of their homeland, are understandable."
Andreyev along with other diplomats had been met by a group of demonstrators carrying Polish and Ukrainian flags and chanting "fascists" and "killers."
"The Polish authorities did not recommend that the ambassador should lay flowers on May 9 in Warsaw," Kamiński added.
"Splashing the Russian ambassador with a red substance is an incident which should never have happened," Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said during his visit to Iran.
"It is deplorable," Rau stated, adding that "diplomats enjoy special protection, irrespective of the politics being conducted by the governments which they represent."
The Soviet Soldiers' Mausoleum Cemetery is located at Żwirki i Wigury Street in Warsaw and covers an area of 19 hectares.
It was established a few years after the end of World War II on the area of a large park. The remains of over 20,000 soldiers killed in the years 1944-1945 are buried there.
