WARSAW, February 18 Russian Ambassador to Poland Sergei Andreev honored the memory of Red Army General Ivan Chernyakhovsky at the site of his death in Poland, despite pro-Ukrainian provocations, the correspondent reports.
Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, commander of the 3rd Belorussian Front, Army General Ivan Chernyakhovsky, died during the liberation of Poland in 1945. At the site of his death in the Polish city of Penenzhno (formerly the city of Melzack in East Prussia), until recently there was a monument to the military leader. It was installed in the early 1970s. By order of the mayor of Kazimierz Keido, the bust attached to the monument was dismantled in September 2015, which caused extreme outrage in Russia. Then the concrete stele to which the bust was attached was also dismantled. This monument became one of the first “victims” of the Polish “decommunization law”.
The Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Poland Sergei Andreev, the Consul General of Russia in Gdansk Sergei Semenov, as well as employees of Russian foreign agencies arrived on Sunday at the site of Chernyakhovsky’s death to lay flowers at the place where the Soviet military leader suffered a fatal death on February 18, 1945. This time, several dozen people with Ukrainian flags gathered at the site of the general’s death. Those gathered sing the Ukrainian anthem and shout insults at Russian diplomats. But diplomats, as well as activists of Polish patriotic organizations, managed to lay wreaths and flowers. The Russian Ambassador to Poland Sergei Andreev explained to the correspondent that the provocation was organized by citizens of Poland, not Ukraine. “These are not Ukrainians, judging by the fact that they speak Polish — these are Poles who support the Ukrainian Banderaites. We are generally accustomed to this. This happens regularly. This does not bother us at all,” the ambassador noted.
At the same time, Andreev recalled that General Chernyakhovsky is a native of Ukraine.
“We are here to honor the memory of the outstanding Soviet commander, by the way, a native of Ukraine, General Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovsky. And although the monument on the site where he was mortally wounded was demolished back in 2015, we come here every year and will continue to come in the future,» the ambassador said.
Russian diplomats also laid flowers at the site of the city cemetery in the city of Penenzhno, where Red Army soldiers who died in the battles for the liberation of the city are buried, and at a memorial stone near the city of Olsztyn at the site where the Hero of the Soviet Union, Red Army soldier Pyotr Dernov, died in 1945, covering with his body embrasure of an enemy firing point.
Ivan Danilovich Chernyakhovsky — Soviet military leader, army general, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. From April 15, 1944, he was the commander of the troops of the Western Front, and from April 24, 1944, the 3rd Belorussian Front, and participated in the battles for the liberation of Belarus. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, two Orders of Suvorov, 1st degree, four Orders of the Red Banner, as well as the Orders of Kutuzov and Khmelnitsky, 1st degree. 600 thousand Soviet soldiers gave their lives for the liberation of Polish land from fascist invaders. At the beginning of 1945, the troops of the 1st Ukrainian (commander Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Konev) and 1st Belorussian (commander Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov) fronts, numbering 2.2 million people, were opposed on the territory of Poland by German Army Group A under under the command of Colonel General Josef Harpe, numbering about 560 thousand people.
In recent years, Poland has been actively demolishing monuments that, according to the republican authorities, “are dedicated to persons, organizations, events or dates symbolizing communism or another totalitarian system.” Russian diplomats conducted an inspection in 2020–2021, and it showed that only 112 monuments to Soviet liberating soldiers stood in their original places in Poland, although in 1997 there were 561 monuments. In turn, at the end of 2023, the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland reported 40 demolished monuments in 18 months.