Warsaw City Hall stated the repossession procedure on Saturday, of a Russian secondary school building in the city’s Mokotów district. According to a court ruling, the building has been illegally occupied by the Russian embassy in Poland.

The news was first broken on its website by the state-owned television broadcaster TVP Info on Saturday.

“Police officers appeared on Saturday morning in front of a building at 45 Kielecka Street in Warsaw that houses a Russian secondary school,” the website wrote. “The city started the repossession process of the building, illegally occupied by the Russians,” TVP Info added.

The #Warsaw City Hall is evicting employees of the school at the #Russian Embassy in the #Polish capital.#Moscow will protest about this, said Ambassador Sergei Andreev. pic.twitter.com/Kz1OAssWdp

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) April 29, 2023

The repossession process is carried out “in full cooperation with the Foreign Ministry based on a court ruling that granted the Polish state the ownership right to the building that for years has been illegally held by the Russian embassy,” Łukasz Jasina, Foreign Ministry Spokesman, told PAP on Saturday.

Russian housing complex repossessed by the city of Warsaw

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According to Jasina, the building did not have diplomatic status.

Repossession beginnings

Last year, the foreign ministry recommended launching proceedings into two properties held by the Russian embassy and not used for diplomatic or consular purposes.

The buildings included a school building and a former housing establishment for Russian diplomats that had been left unused for decades. Warsaw took over the latter property last year following a court verdict.

TVP Info said that the school building, where the children of Russian diplomats and military officers studied was nationalized and handed over to the Soviet side in 1945. The school had probably been temporarily closed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.