His name Kaliningradin the homonymous Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, will be erased by the Poles maps and official documents and will be replaced by the city’s ancient Polish name, Warsaw announced today.

Citing the recommendation of the national commission on toponyms, the development ministry said Kaliningrad would henceforth be called Krolewicz, the Polish name for the once Prussian city of Kainichsberg. “We do not wish for the Russification of Poland, hence our decision to call Kaliningrad and its wider region in our own language,” Minister Valdermar Bunda said.

The representative of the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov, reacted immediately, commenting that “it is no longer about Russophobia, but about processes bordering on madness that are happening in Poland.”

“It will not bring anything good for Poland. These are not just unfriendly actions, they are hostile actions,” he insisted.

Königsber or Königsberg was founded in 1255 by the Order of the Teutonic Knights. It was the capital of the duchy, kingdom and free state of Prussia. Its original name came from King Ottokar II of Bohemia who participated in crusades in this region. The original Conigsberg evolved into Königsberg in German, Krolewiec in Polish, Karaliaucius in Lithuanian and Korolewiets in Russian. The city was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, the former chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, when the enclave was ceded to the Soviet Union as compensation for the damage and losses suffered during World War II.

“The fact that we have a large city near our border named after Kalinin, a criminal responsible for the decision to mass execute Polish officers in Katyn in 1940, arouses negative feelings in Poland,” Buda explained.