The reason behind the name change is the new language guidelines issued in Poland.
Poland stop calling Kaliningrad, which belongs to Russia, Kaliningrad and use its Polish name in the future, reports news agency AFP.
The Polish government announced the matter on Wednesday after receiving a new language instruction. The committee responsible for foreign place names recommended that the name Królewiec be used for Kaliningrad in the future in official contexts.
“We don’t want the Russification of Poland, and that’s why we’ve decided to move Kaliningrad [kaupungin] and the name of the Kaliningrad region as our national language,” the Polish Minister of Development Waldemar Buda said in a statement.
Poland’s decision immediately angered Russia. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Poland’s actions are no longer just about “Russophobia” but about “almost insanity”.
In the year Founded in 1255, the city is known as Königsberg in German, Karaliaučius in Lithuanian, and Korolevets in Russian. In 1946, the Soviet Union renamed the city Kaliningrad after its head of state Mikhail Kalinin by.
According to Minister Buda, the name Kaliningrad evokes negative images in Poles, because Kalin is considered to have been complicit in the Katyn massacre in 1940. Joseph Stalin an estimated 25,000 Poles died in the massacre ordered.
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