The Polish Committee of Geographical Names has officially decided to name Kaliningrad as Krolewiec.

The agency also recommends calling the region Krolewiec as well.

“The fact that a major city near the Polish border is named after Kalinin, a criminal responsible, among other things, for making the decision to carry out the mass murder of Poles (the Katyn massacre), has an emotional and negative connotation in Poland,” the statement said.

Kaliningrad was known by the German name of Koenigsberg until after World War II, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed to honour Soviet politician Mikhail Kalinin.

They added that events related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the imposition of the so-called “Russian world” and Russia’s conduct of an information war, make it necessary to look differently at the issue of imposed names because it does not meet with approval in Poland.