Russian ambassador to Poland splattered with red paint during protest
The Russian ambassador to Poland was doused with red paint by pro-Ukraine activists in Warsaw on Monday when he tried to lay a wreath to commemorate Victory Day.
Sergei Andreev was attacked at the Soviet Soldiers Cemetery in the Polish capital, where he arrived for the event that marks the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies.
The ambassador was quickly surrounded by a throng of activists opposed to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Andreev is seen being splattered with red paint being thrown from behind before a protester standing beside him throws a big blob of it in his face.
The group then prevented the ambassador and others from laying their flowers at the cemetery as they carried Ukrainian flags and chanted “fascist” and “murderer” at him.
Some were wearing white sheets smeared with blood, symbolizing the Ukrainian victims of Russia’s invasion, which was launched Feb. 24.
“In Warsaw, during the laying of a wreath at the cemetery of Soviet soldiers, an attack was carried out on the Russian ambassador to Poland, Sergei Andreev, and the Russian diplomats accompanying him,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram.
“The admirers of neo-Nazism have again shown their faces,” she said, repeating the Kremlin’s assertion that it is fighting neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
“But as I have said before, we cannot be intimidated. It must be terrible for the inhabitants of Europe to see their own reflections in the mirror,” she added.
Police helped Andreev and other members of his entourage flee from the chaotic scene.
He told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that he was not seriously harmed in the attack.
Poland has accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine since Moscow sent troops into the country.
On Monday, President Vladimir Putin used a massive annual Victory Parade in Moscow to justify his brutal war on Ukraine — telling 11,000 gathered troops that they must battle on for Russia’s survival and to stop the “horror of a global war.”
