Poland appoints new ambassador to Russia

The Polish Foreign Ministry has officially appointed Włodzimierz Marciniak as the new Ambassador to Russia, the ministry’s press service said on Thursday. "Minister Witold Waszczykowski appointed new Polish ambassadors on behalf of the president. Wlodzimierz Marciniak will represent Poland in Moscow, and Jan Piekło will head the Embassy in Kiev," the press service said. The newly-appointed ambassador said his main task will be to preserve cooperation in political, economic, social and regional spheres. He also thinks it is important "to work on Poland’s image" in the situation with monuments as it often results in "unfair and ungrounded accusations against Poland." Marciniak is a political analyst and a specialist on the USSR and Russia, Head of the Department of International Relations at the Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków and a lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Warsaw. In 2012 he worked as professor at the Institute of Political Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Marciniak also served as a member of the Polish-Russian Group on difficult issues.