The Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names Outside Poland has announced that from now on the country will use the names "Königsberg" and "Königsberg Region" instead of "Kaliningrad" and "Kaliningrad Region".

This was reported by Rzeczpospolita.

The Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names Outside Poland has said that the Polish name Königsberg Oblast is recommended instead of Kaliningrad Oblast for the administrative unit in which the Russian city is located.

The commission noted that when making the changes, it was taken into account that "the city, which now has the Russian name of Kaliningrad, is known in Poland by its traditional name of Koenigsberg" and that the current Russian name of the city is "artificial and not related to any city, not with the region".

"The fact that a large city near the Polish borders was named after M.I. Kalinin, a criminal who was co-responsible, among other things, for the decision on the mass murder of Poles (the Katyn massacre), has an emotional, negative character in Poland," the relevant Commission said in a statement.

The commission emphasized that "the current Russian name of the city is an element of the Russian symbolic space imposed on the audience even outside the country."

"The events related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the imposition of the so-called "Russian measure", and Russia's information war, force us to look differently at the issue of imposed names, which cause great controversy and are not approved in Poland." - said the Commission.

We will remind, Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki said that the country will strengthen the state border with the Russian Federation.

The senior official noted that the Polish government has already taken steps to strengthen security in the region.

In addition, 

Poland on the border with the Kaliningrad region of Russia has started the construction of an electronic barrier

 for better control of the situation in the relevant area.

The electronic barrier is a system of cameras and motion detectors. 

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