“We express our concern at the incomprehensible decision of the Russian side to expel Professor Henryk Głębocki, a Jagiellonian University historian and associate of the Institute of National Remembrance, who is on a research trip to Moscow,” the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website.
It added that the Polish ambassador in Moscow, Włodzimierz Marciniak, “presented a note regarding this incident” to the Russian foreign ministry on Monday.
The Polish foreign ministry also said that “the groundless expulsion of the Polish researcher," whose "scholarly work is to normalize relations between Poland and Russia," is "yet another element in the anti-Polish propaganda campaign that the Russian side has pursued for months, and another proof that political dialogue between our countries encounters obstacles due to one-sided actions of the Russian Federation.”
The Polish foreign ministry said that “preserving free contacts and ensuring open dialogue between Polish and Russian historians, scholars, and cultural creators is a special asset that should be protected rather than subjected to administrative restrictions."
Głębocki, a historian from Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), has returned to Kraków after being detained by Russia's FSB security service and given 24 hours to leave the country, the IPN has said.
Głębocki, who went to Russia earlier in November, had given lectures in St. Petersburg on “Operation Poland”-- a Soviet secret police operation of 1937-1938 in which 111,000 to 200,000 Poles were killed -- before he was detained.
“Operation Poland” was “one of the biggest genocide-like crimes in the history of 20th century Europe,” according to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.
Meanwhile, Russia's foreign ministry has confirmed to Polish Radio that the expulsion was a response to Poland's recent expulsion of a Russian citizen, who was accused of “conducting an activity aimed at jeopardizing the interests of the Polish State, initiating hostile hybrid activities and maintaining contacts with special services of the Russian Federation.”
(gs/pk)
Source: Polish Radio, msz.gov.pl