You're reading: Polish ambassador explains evacuation of ethnic Poles from southeast Ukraine by people’s own wish

Moscow – Warsaw's decision to evacuate ethnic Poles from south-eastern Ukraine has not been prompted by the latest escalation of tensions in the region, Polish Ambassador to Moscow Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz told Interfax.

“Definitely, there is no link between the escalation that, regrettably we are observing in Donbas today and the evacuation of people of Polish descent who were present in the conflict area and who expressed their wish to leave these regions,” she said.

“This decision was adopted several weeks ago, in other words in 2014, but its implementation took us some time and was completed several weeks ago,” the Polish ambassador said.

“Signals that there was a threat and there were people who wanted to use every opportunity to move to Poland and stay there at least for a while emerged a long time ago,” she said.

The Polish authorities “needed time to make such a decision, which was adopted at a certain point, lists were compiled and this evacuation was conducted,” she added.